The First Customer
Ever wondered how to use your experience to start or grow a business?
The First Customer intimately dissects successful entrepreneurs journeys to their first customer. Learn from practical real-life examples of regular people transforming into superheroes by starting their own business.
Buckle up … the rocket is taking off!
The First Customer
The First Customer - Unearthing the Secrets to Sustainable Living with Cathy Nesbitt
In this week's episode, I was lucky enough to interview Cathy Nesbitt, the CEO and founder of Cathy's Crawly Composters.
Cathy went from being a city dweller to an eco-entrepreneur in a small town. She recognized a significant environmental problem when the landfill for the greater Toronto area closed in 2002 so she came up with an innovative solution: indoor composting with worms. Despite the initial aversion people had towards worms in their homes, Cathy's passion for sustainability led her to educate and create a market for her eco-friendly solution.
Over the years, Cathy's dedication to her cause has had a ripple effect, inspiring students and changing perspectives on waste management. Cathy's journey as a self-taught entrepreneur paved the way for solving environmental challenges and making the world a better place.
Let's travel all the way to Bradford, Ontario to get to know more about Cathy Nesbitt in this fun episode!
Guest Info:
Cathy's Crawly Composters
https://www.cathyscomposters.com/
Cathy Nesbitt's LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/cathynesbitt/
Connect with Jay on LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayaigner/
The First Customer Youtube Channel
https://www.youtube.com/@thefirstcustomerpodcast
The First Customer podcast website
https://www.firstcustomerpodcast.com
Follow The First Customer on LinkedIn
http://www.linkedin.com/company/the-first-customer-podcast/
[00:00:27] Jay: Hi everyone, welcome to The First Customer podcast today. I am lucky enough to be joined by the worm lady the worm advocate Cathy Nesbitt from Cathy's creepy. No, not creepy crawlers. See you got me Cathy's crawly composters. I knew I was gonna stumble with that. Welcome. Cathy. How are you?
[00:00:46] Cathy: Oh, Jay, I'm excited to be here. Thank you.
I've been called creepy many times,
[00:00:50] Jay: I, you know, you're not creepy. I just think of creepy crawlers, you know? The little, remember the creepy crawlers? The little things you put in the oven and they turn into little plastic things? I had those when I was a kid. Anyway, you're the worm lady. I'm dying to get there. But let's start at the beginning. where'd you grow up? Where are you, a Canadian,from an early age?
[00:01:07] Cathy: From way back, from my early days, yes.
Born in Toronto, and yeah, so I'm from the large city, but I didn't, I guess I'm not a city person because I moved to a small town and not, that's not so small anymore. Yeah, and you know, in 2002, the landfill for the greater Toronto area closed. And although Canada's a pretty large country, we couldn't find a place to site a new landfill.
So we started to export our garbage to Michigan.
[00:01:35] Jay: Hmm.
[00:01:35] Cathy: Sorry. A thousand trucks a week, Jay.
[00:01:39] Jay: I'm sure they like that in Michigan.
Don't, you don't have to apologize to me. I'm not close enough to Michigan To get your trash, but,
[00:01:45] Cathy: It's what we do as Canadians.
[00:01:47] Jay: Yeah, you're so nice. I thought you guys were nice people. Maybe that's why, because you send
your garbage to other places. So, did, kind of your early upbringing where you grew up, like, walk me through that.
Did it have any impact on your entrepreneurial journey as you grew older? Were there things that kind of led to, you know, founding a bunch of different things and being an entrepreneur yourself?
[00:02:06] Cathy: no, I stumbled upon this. this was I, that I saw a problem, a big problem, right? A big smelly problem, and I had a solution. Indoor composting with worms. no, I grew up at a time when, you know, we were told, Get a job, work hard, and you'll get a gold watch in 30 years. And I never understood, like, Why would I, why would you need a watch when you retire?
I didn't want a watch.
[00:02:29] Jay: need a watch to make sure I get to work on time.
did you get the watch, or no? I guess not. Yeah, you went the other path.
[00:02:34] Cathy: no, I left too soon. So now I don't have a pension, I don't have anything.
No gold watch, no pension.
[00:02:39] Jay: Lots of worms to take care of.
[00:02:42] Cathy: Yeah, so our landfill closed. Toronto, really, I mean, I make light because it's such a heavy topic. And it's a big solution. But in order for people to kind of buy in, they need to befriend the worms.
Because they're in the house. and people are freaked out by worms. Because worm is a bad word.
[00:03:00] Jay: Yes. So, walk me through, kind of solution to the problem. Like, what was, you saw this big problem, you're running out of landfill space, and you went, oh my god, you know, worms could be the solution here.
[00:03:13] Cathy: Yeah, so I'm an avid gardener and I knew the value of the worm compost. And when I bought my house in 93, a teacher friend asked me to look after her worm bin. I had, I didn't know anything about worm composting. I was like, worms in my house, gross. which maybe some of the listeners are thinking,
stay tuned.
now it's my life. yeah, and I, so I took on the challenge because I think that we should do things for ourself, not let someone else say, Hey, you won't like that. Oh, good. Thanks for saving me the time.
Right. and I know you have lots of kids, so they're going to be saying, Hey dad, what do you think about this?
And you might think that's dumb, but you might not say it, right?
[00:03:52] Jay: I'm guilty of saying it more than I should probably, but, so, walk me through it. I am still, I'm just dying to know, like, how this happened and what the business side of it became.
[00:04:03] Cathy: Yeah, so this is the indoor composting with worms. So it's the same idea as outdoor composting. You need a carbon nitrogen mix and, you know, the worms eat. So the carbon is the bedding. That's the paper. So that's from the waste stream, the paper waste. And then the nitrogen is our food scraps, so our scraps from the kitchen.
The worms require both, and they eat it all. And their poop is the fertilizer. That's the black gold. That's what we need to create more nutrient rich soil, yeah, soil, which will, grow more nutrient rich food. So it solves a lot of problems.
[00:04:39] Jay: do they, I mean, so, does it have to be, I would assume they can't compost everything, right? So, like, they, does this also include a mindset shift of the people throwing stuff in the trash can?
[00:04:54] Cathy: Absolutely, yeah. So this, what we're doing is taking the kind of the wet waste. It's all your fruit and veg, coffee, tea, pasta, rice. What stays out of the food is the meat, dairy. sauce, anything that might be harmful to the worms.
So it is quite a significant amount. And, you know, what I say is we're taking the stink out of garbage, other than the meat waste.
But we're taking the, you know, the rotting food waste, feeding that to the worms. It's aerobic process, meaning with oxygen. So it's not going to smell like rotting food in your house. That would be bad.
And the rotting smell, that smell that we're smelling, is actually gas. So it's bad for us. It's bad for the worms.
We can't breathe the gas and neither can the worms.
[00:05:38] Jay: So, if you, how do you pitch this to somebody that doesn't, you know, currently enjoy worms as close proximity as you do?
[00:05:46] Cathy: Yeah, that was the challenge. You asked at the beginning about, you know, if I was kind of a natural entrepreneur if I came. No, I just had a solution and then jumped right in. I'm thinking this will be so great. This is, like, I'm going to be, you know, I thought I'd be on a beach 21 years in. I thought it'd be on Easy Street.
[00:06:08] Jay: Mm
[00:06:10] Cathy: Probably not. I don't think I thought 20 years ahead, but If I had thought, you know, Jay, this is a ridiculous business model. I don't have repeat customers. You know, I'm, so when I started, I just thought this is a beautiful thing. Everybody needs worms to manage their food waste.
And I just started having a table wherever I could, and I learned early on that people didn't want what I had. And people don't buy what they need, they buy what they want. So they needed worms, but they didn't want them.
[00:06:41] Jay: Sure.
[00:06:42] Cathy: So I started to, so then I switched. I was like, okay, I don't know how am I going to do this, but I need to educate.
I needed to create the market.
I needed to let people know they could do this in the house. So I started to do school workshops. So then I was going into schools and I was like, okay, now I just have to wait 20 years for them to have buying
[00:07:00] Jay: grow up. Yeah.
[00:07:01] Cathy: I know. Yay, I made it.
[00:07:03] Jay: You made it now that, now they're ready.
[00:07:05] Cathy: and now they're here and I can say, Okay.
I can say that I have had the privilege of meeting people that I went into their grade three class. Now they're, they graduated college. And some of them went into univer, universal, some of them went into environmental studies because they had worms in their grade three class. Wow.
[00:07:25] Jay: do you just have a giant amount of worms in your house right now?
[00:07:30] Cathy: I have quite a bit, yes, but they're contained. They're
[00:07:33] Jay: How do you measure free range.
worms. How do you measure the amount of worms in any given space? Like is there some sort of like unit of measurement of worms? Like per, like container? You're just like there's a hundred in this container?
How do you I have no idea how it works.
[00:07:48] Cathy: Yeah, so you kind of start with a certain amount, in a container. Say you had a pound in a container. The ratio, they have a phenomenal reproduction rate. They
breed more than rabbits.
But rabbits are the, you know, oh, they breed so much like rabbits. No,
[00:08:02] Jay: Right, right.
[00:08:03] Cathy: But they're not, maybe not cute and cuddly, depending who you ask.
[00:08:06] Jay: Sure, sure.
[00:08:08] Cathy: they're hermaphrodites, meaning male and female. So once they've mated, they both get pregnant. They both create a cocoon. Wow. Talk about equal society. We're headed there, folks.
[00:08:18] Jay: just follow the worms.
how many do you have in your house, do you think?
[00:08:22] Cathy: Yeah, at any given time, I would have maybe between a hundred and fifty pounds. A hundred, fifty and a hundred pounds of worms at any given time.
It really is hard to know exactly how many you
[00:08:32] Jay: right,
so how many containers or how much real estate does that take up in a house if you have 100 to 150 pounds of worms?
[00:08:40] Cathy: okay, so I have a smallish house. It's a nine hundred square foot house. And my basement is full of containers.
[00:08:47] Jay: Full of containers of worms.
[00:08:50] Cathy: And they stack, you know, like there's different ways to do it. The worms, the beautiful part about the worms is they don't have a, they don't require a lot of personal space.
The guideline in a, say, if somebody was using a Rubbermaid tote for the Do It Yourselfer, so, you know, the blue ones, I don't know what the
[00:09:05] Jay: Yeah.
[00:09:06] Cathy: Yeah, maybe two feet long, one foot across, maybe. The guideline is a pound of worms per square foot of surface. So in a container that size, you could have maybe two pounds of worms,
and they're eating half their weight per day.
So if you had a pound of worms, half a pound per day, or three to four pounds per week. And it really is substantial, and then they're increasing in number, so you can add more food as you're going along.
[00:09:30] Jay: Mm hmm.
[00:09:30] Cathy: you know, they'll regulate their own population based on available food and available space. they're creating, like, they're the original alchemists.
They're converting what we call garbage into black gold. So we can use that material to grow more nutrient rich food. In North America, we have destroyed the soil. Growing, you know, doing monocropping, corn, wheat, and soy.
that's not how nature intended. So we need to, in order to... reduce the amount of chemicals that are applied to our farmlands.
We really need to increase the biodiversity of, microbes.
And that, and when that happens through composting and worm composting.
[00:10:08] Jay: have so many questions. did, so, do you, I saw a documentary on, Fungi, like the mushroom guy on Netflix, which I've fallen in love with that guy. He's like a super
[00:10:17] Cathy: Me too.
[00:10:18] Jay: they took,yeah. And they, but they talk about how, He's like a citizen scientist kind of you know, and he's like learned all this Do you feel a similar way about worms?
We're like you've really you could probably teach some sort of class on just Everything you would ever want to know about worms Or you have
you learned a lot and like you just got maybe discovered things that you never you know I mean obviously things you would never have thought of but you know Just being in that space.
are you kind of considering yourself a citizen scientist of worms?
[00:10:46] Cathy: Yeah, in a way, I've done a lot of research. I've done manure management research, Shortly before I started my business, there was a really bad tragedy in a part of Ontario where there was a lot of rain and dairy farms around and the, you know, the manure piles got oversaturated, they flooded into the water treatment plant.
There was a lot of errors. I mean, there was human error, there was, nature was taking over. It wasn't the farm, the farms were blamed, but I would say that it was more human error at the plant. And a lot of people died. and I learned early on that the worms can reduce manure piles by up to 80%. So reducing the volume, and reducing gram negative bacteria, E.
coli, Salmonella, Shingella, things that cause problems for us.
[00:11:33] Jay: Mm
[00:11:34] Cathy: So then I set forth at that point, I was like, Wow. And if anyone's listening, this still hasn't happened. I'm, I live in a place where it's close to horse country. We have a lot of, horse people. The main difference, this is a generalization, but the main difference between cattle people and horse people is that the cattle people love the manure.
They use that for, on their land to grow more crops for their animals. Horse people, the manure is a nuisance. It's like, ugh, we don't want to, like, you know, get someone to take that away, like they
[00:12:05] Jay: Mm hmm.
[00:12:06] Cathy: in general. Sometimes they're the people,
[00:12:09] Jay: All right,
[00:12:10] Cathy: right? But it's a problem. So I thought, man, if I could just go around and inoculate.
Manure piles with worms, the worms would increase in number, reduce the volume. Then I could have an endless supply of worms. They would have their pile managed and everybody would be happy. Right? The planet would be better because the worms make it into, the manure into something safer for handling.
[00:12:33] Jay: Mm
[00:12:33] Cathy: it never worked out that way. Just, you know, it's kind of a lot of work when people aren't familiar with the concept. And, you know, there's a lot of moving parts. In the worms?
[00:12:44] Jay: Something if you cut a worm in half What does that do to the worm? Does it kill it? Does it eventually like seal itself up and it's good and it's two pieces that can go do its thing What happens if a worm gets cut in half?
[00:12:57] Cathy: Great question, great. that comes up almost every
[00:12:59] Jay: I'm sure it does. That's like a very it seems like the number one worm question. I would
[00:13:03] Cathy: Right? Very common.
Yeah, and people will say to me, Did you know that if you cut a worm in half, you have two worms? And when it happens in a school, it's a great learning opportunity. I have a big puppet. So I'll bring out my puppet, and I, like, worms have five hearts each, that's true.
So on my worm puppet, it's a big long puppet.
One end is the head and the swollen band. You've seen the swollen band on the worm. So that means it's an adult worm. It's sexually mature.
And that's where the cocoon is from. All of the hearts are between the head and the swollen band.
So those beautiful lines on the worm, I say if a worm, so they have one head, one tail, five hearts.
They're all at the one end. So I say if you cut a worm in half, you have two worms. Everyone's in agreement. Yes, we do. We have two worms. Good. All right. Then I say, if we cut a worm in half, do we have two live worms?
Oh, different question, right? And it's really fascinating when I say, if you cut a worm in half, do you have two?
Yes. Everybody's in agreement. Like, it's just like, it's like a choir. Yes. Of course. Yes. And then the second time it's like, some say yes, they're sure. Some are like, oh, and some are, oh, they're just really don't know. And I say, good. Let's do it.
[00:14:13] Jay: dying to know the answer to this
[00:14:14] Cathy: So here we go.
[00:14:15] Jay: the latter camp.
[00:14:17] Cathy: yeah, so if you cut a worm in half, one half may live.
Depending those lines are individual body parts. They have very strong bodies. so if a couple segments get cut off the end by mistake when you're gardening, that piece will wiggle around, become part of the soil and they may grow back.
[00:14:33] Jay: If a worm is cut in half, it depends how close it is to the critical end of the worm.
[00:14:38] Cathy: if it lives or not. The second half will not live. It doesn't have a head.
[00:14:41] Jay: Okay. Okay. So the answer
[00:14:43] Cathy: Whew! Big long answer.
[00:14:45] Jay: No, but that's
good. Now I can sleep tonight thinking about,
[00:14:49] Cathy: Whew! You're welcome.
[00:14:50] Jay: thank you for that.
So how did you... God, again, so many questions. But how did you monetize things once you kind of realized like, Okay, this is a different thing.
It's a passion... Not a passion project, it's a passion business. And, But nobody kind of gets it, and you have to create this market for you. How did you start to monetize the business?
[00:15:12] Cathy: Yeah, that's a great question. It, speaking. Somehow I have no fear of public speaking, like I've been given this beautiful mix of oddities that really have served me as an entrepreneur. And one was being a secretary for 20 years.
Like, looking back, I'm like, why did it take me 20 years to figure out that's not where I belonged?
You know, I changed jobs every year and I didn't need to have a job to get a job. I was like, I knew I would get a job because I was that good.
[00:15:38] Jay: Right.
[00:15:39] Cathy: Or that confident, or what, cocky. I don't know what the word is. I was something.
[00:15:43] Jay: it's confidence.
[00:15:44] Cathy: It was something I had something
[00:15:45] Jay: don't strike me.
as cocky, you strike me as confident, which
[00:15:48] Cathy: Okay. Thank you. Alright,
yeah, so I knew that I didn't wanna do this part-time. I didn't wanna have a job and, you know, work on my little side thing. I was like, I'm all in or
[00:15:58] Jay: mm hmm.
[00:15:59] Cathy: And that's where I was. So I, at the beginning, yeah, just from speaking I started to do school workshops early on, speaking at garden clubs.
And then when you speak, you become the perceived expert. And then people are like, well, I want to do this. Where do I get worms? Good. Now you get them from me. That's good.
And so it was kind of creating that feedback where I was getting, you know, money coming. And then referrals, just like word of mouth.
Because I don't have repeat customers. I needed to add more things. So my very first event that I was exhibiting at, I met a gentleman who sells a sprout grower. it looks like a spaceship. And I didn't know anything about sprouts or sprouting. And when I asked him about that, He said, Oh, it's a sprout grower, blah, blah, blah.
And so I started sprouting at that time. I wasn't selling it, but I was sprouting for 10 years. And then I started selling it in 2012. So my life kind of goes in cycles of different things adding. my very first customer, since that's the name of the podcast,
was so exciting. It was Earth Day. How appropriate for an environmental business.
Earth Day, April 22nd, 2002. That's a lot of two
[00:17:08] Jay: not the 2022 part, I mean the, April 22nd. It's my
[00:17:11] Cathy: April 22nd. Yes.
[00:17:13] Jay: shout out Harper for her birthday. ha.
[00:17:17] Cathy: Oh, she's an Earth Day baby.
[00:17:18] Jay: She's an Earth Day baby, that's right. Yeah,
[00:17:21] Cathy: That's a, that's, she's going to do good work. I can feel it
[00:17:24] Jay: I think so. She's a good one.
[00:17:25] Cathy: Yeah. So Earth Day, I had four deliveries. The fourth one was to a woman, 80 year old woman living in an apartment. And I was so inspired when I met this woman. She invited me in. She was high energy. She had a little gazebo.
And she was a nut farmer in her work life. She
[00:17:45] Jay: Mm hmm.
[00:17:46] Cathy: farmer. And so she was telling me all about her life. And we had tea together. And then she took me to her gazebo. She was growing watercress. And she said, I'm like a bee. And she was just pollinating with her hand. Like she was like, Every morning I come in and I was like, I'm like a bee.
Cuckoo, right?
[00:18:04] Jay: Right. Yeah, yeah.
[00:18:05] Cathy: I came home. I was so excited, Jay. I said to my husband, Oh my God, I know what I'm going to be like when I'm 80.
[00:18:13] Jay: saw myself.
watercress
[00:18:15] Cathy: I'm, I saw myself. I'm like, there I am. Wow.
I hadn't met anybody in their eighties who wasn't like, you know, grumpy, like low energy, maybe really sick.
And I was like, Oh my gosh, it's possible to be healthy.
Vibrant, you know, still being able to carry on a conversation and she was active, involved in like lots of organizations and Well, I said, wow, but you can't get there without having a life where you look after yourself.
[00:18:45] Jay: Right. I think, well, that's a, I'll ask that question later, but I think you hit on something very important, which is just being active in general.
I always get so confused when people are bored. And I think that, I grew up in Virginia, kind of in the middle of nowhere. We had a horse, we lived on a horse farm.
Another horse farm. It was more just like a hodgepodge. We had pheasants and chickens
and, I mean, turkeys and all sorts of crazy stuff and horses and,
uh, so, but I kind of, you know, I wasn't allowed to be bored,
no, so always having something to do or having a hobby and being, you know, very active is something that I think I've continually heard will just keep you sharp more than anything else. You know any dietary thing and it just being active physically and mentally
[00:19:33] Cathy: Agreed.
[00:19:35] Jay: you very well for a very long time So was she your first customer?
[00:19:40] Cathy: She was, I mean, I had four deliveries that day. She was kind of the fourth one, I
[00:19:43] Jay: Okay, the fourth customer,
okay
[00:19:45] Cathy: but on the first day of my deliveries. So, yes.
[00:19:48] Jay: so do you have so you have a hundred and fifty worms or 150 pounds of worms in your house? Just estimated Does that mean that you have to have 75 pounds of stuff you feed them every, do, are you like going to buy Worm food at this point, or do you have enough stuff to give them?
Are
you composting for your neighbors?
[00:20:04] Cathy: Yeah, great question. So we give them, feed like we have oats, so we do end up purchasing stuff.
But over the years, you know, there really is a great business model here that, and if I wasn't, you know, I never wanted to manage people, Jay.
That's why it's just my husband and I and that's we've stayed small because I, and I did that.
I don't know, like looking back now, it's like, Oh, that's why we're not big because I didn't want to manage
[00:20:28] Jay: Sure.
[00:20:29] Cathy: There is a huge opportunity. You know, you think about grocery store waste, they pay to have that hauled away, right? If you can not to undercut the waste haulers, but rather than it going in landfill, imagine if we can convert this.
It's a resource. If we call it a resource rather than garbage, it is. That's what it becomes.
And so there could be people, and there are organizations now starting these composting projects. but with worms, it just adds another level of, because they're living creatures, they need a certain environment.
It needs to be a certain temperature. You need air flow. Because people say, oh, if they eat so much, why don't we just add them right into the landfill?
[00:21:08] Jay: Right.
[00:21:09] Cathy: Because there's other toxic elements in the landfill, and the landfill is actually anaerobic, because they squish out the
[00:21:15] Jay: Right.
[00:21:16] Cathy: the, it's not the right conditions.
[00:21:17] Jay: Interesting. Now,
I'm blanking on the word, but, Did like the genetics of the worms and like their characteristics and traits. Help me out with the word I'm thinking of here when you breed something over time to kind of make it You know to get the characteristics you want out of it.
I don't care. It's
[00:21:31] Cathy: Oh, like, you know, selective traits
[00:21:34] Jay: yeah, yeah, yeah, is there any of that like do you get like the better were are there better ones that you kind of like You know, you would put in to reproduce with each other more to make bigger, better, stronger worms? Or is it
[00:21:44] Cathy: I, no, I
[00:21:46] Jay: Okay.
[00:21:47] Cathy: I'm not involved in that. I, you know, early on I did meet a PhD student from, from Nepal and she was working on a way to get the worms to eat more.
And I thought they're perfect the way they are. Why would we even, why would we even mess with them? Like, and then they have five hearts.
Like, that's so cool.
[00:22:06] Jay: Okay. I just didn't know if like naturally that kind of the bigger, better ones would kind of,
you
[00:22:13] Cathy: I think they would naturally, yes, you said it. I think they would naturally work it out for themselves.
[00:22:17] Jay: All right. Well, you already gave me one. Let's pivot a little bit. You gave me one with the Staying active, but give me two healthy things you as a business owner, an entrepreneur, just in general that you do to kind of keep your longevity up as long as you, you can, we all want to be, most of us want to be on this earth as long as possible, as healthy as possible.
What are two more things that you're doing to kind of, to keep up your longevity?
[00:22:44] Cathy: I do a whole bunch of things. I realize that I am super important. Everybody is. We just don't always realize how important we are. You know, I'm realizing, I don't know why it takes so long for us to get it.
You know, I turned 60 last year and I've been all about prevention for a long time. I realize that if I want to be 80 and vibrant, I need to be Forty and vibrant, and fifty and vibrant, and so on.
So, I sleep, I always go to bed pretty much the same time, get up early. I think the important part is rising at the same time every day.
[00:23:18] Jay: Mm hmm.
[00:23:19] Cathy: I earth, which is going barefoot. Being exposed to the Earth's element is so important. When we started wearing shoes, we were disconnected from the Earth's energy. And I'm really understanding that with energy.
like we have our plug, and we have the two prongs, and then we have the ground, the round
[00:23:36] Jay: Right. Yep.
[00:23:38] Cathy: We need that too, because we're electrical beings.
so we need to ground, we need to ground somehow, and earthing is the cheapest way, you just take your shoes off.
and stand barefoot or sit barefoot.
Nothing to be done. You don't need to buy any special equipment. so I do that every morning. I have a little routine that I do. Part Qigong, part energy work. I meditate every morning. Not long meditation, just usually five, ten minutes. And when we start our day, and then I have a laughter buddy. I laugh for five minutes every morning, full on.
because my body then gets flooded with, The happy chemicals
[00:24:15] Jay: hmm. Mm hmm.
[00:24:16] Cathy: chemicals
and first thing in the morning before even rising. I don't use an alarm. I just wake up naturally. but as soon as I wake up, I, before jumping out of bed, I take three super long, slow, deep breaths and think about things that I'm grateful for.
And I put a smile on my face, even if I'm not feeling like smiling, because we can trick our mind. If we smile, even if we're feeling sad, depressed, anxious. We send the happy chemicals to our body.
[00:24:45] Jay: Those are all fantastic things and I
can see why that they're working.
You seem infectiously happy and nice and you know I think a lot of people can learn from that stuff. Give me a mystery question time. We have one one more question that I'm gonna ask that I usually don't include it so I can call it the mystery question. What is one thing you could do non business wise? Uh, it could be physical, it could be whatever. What is one thing you would do if you knew you couldn't fail?
[00:25:22] Cathy: Ooh! Wow! One thing I would do if I knew I couldn't fail. Oh, if I knew I wouldn't fail, I would probably create a stand up show and, go and perform it. Thank you.
[00:25:33] Jay: I love that. What a great answer. I think I've had somebody else that gave me that answer and I love it. It's my favorite one. yeah, you seem like you would be a great stand up. I could, I would go to your show. I would bring some worms with me and we
would
[00:25:45] Cathy: a lot of material, I do.
[00:25:46] Jay: I bet you do. A lot of composted material.
See look, we could be up there together. we could do some really corny worm based jokes together. Well you, Cathy, if people want to find you, if people want to find,your organization, what's the best way to get in touch?
[00:25:59] Cathy: Probably my worm website, it's Cathyscomposters. com, Cathywith a C, and I'm all over social media and just Google me.
[00:26:08] Jay: Google me. Alright, well we will google you. You are the most fun, guest I've had, maybe ever. So
[00:26:14] Cathy: Oh my gosh, I love that, whoop!
[00:26:16] Jay: you were a lot of fun. I hope people check you out and I hope people start putting worms in their basement like you. And, you know,
[00:26:22] Cathy: In containers though.
Yes. And continue, or, you know, whatever, Or not.
[00:26:25] Jay: just go wild.
but thank you for being on. I appreciate your time today. You're great.
[00:26:29] Cathy: Thank you Jay, I
[00:26:29] Jay: Thanks, Cathy. Have a good rest of your week. I'll see you.
[00:26:31] Cathy: Okay, bye now.