Entrepreneurs and Dung Beetles share a common ancestor
Every profession requires specific skills and virtues. Regardless of their origin or field, entrepreneur-like personalities seem to share a common bunch of those skills among themselves. You know, the same old words you will find on pretty much every article that talks about entrepreneurship or self-made success.
Concepts like, open-minded, positive attitude or out-of-the-box thinking, they all are ingredients in the seamingly complex and forever changing “How to Bake the Perfect Entrepreneur” recipe. Feel free, of course, to add your own spices as you go, and pelase, always, please, everything with a pinch of salt.
But what are really the most important ingredients that make the successful entrepreneur? According to what I am seeing around, there seems to be 8 qualities that emerge as most important:
Relentless
Sometimes stuborn, always goes the same direction and finds the way across any obstacles regardless of how big they are.Resilient
The natural ability of repeatedly standing up after a failure, will be an absolute key to guarantee the eventual greater success.Insanely obsessed
Very poorly understood by the rest of humanity, there is something special around being able to sustain a heavy interest on something based just on a simple gut feel.Dreamer
The natural capacity to turn dreams into actionable plans will always be something highly valuable.Leader
True leadership simply just is or is not. Usually, happens by being pushed by others’ work, enthusiasm and by using the own experiences to lead by example.Believer
The environment and events that surround you, continuously test your trust and belief in the main goal and as a result, help steer situations as they unfold.Not afraid of failure
Failures and set backs will always be part of the process, which in a way, they are probably just good indicators that there is some learning being done there. Something along the lines of Richard Branson’s “Screw it, let’s do it”.Creative
Sometimes, being just a problem solver may not be enough. Solving those problems in a remarkable way, though, can make a huge difference, a learning embeded in me from my Tigerspike days. Creativity is nothing but a platform to gain an advantadge.
All this is great, but I am pretty sure I have already seen these skills somewhere else before, and as it turns out, nature has beaten us once again. This time in the shape of a creature that is not usually first-to-mind for being a super hero: the Dung Beetle.
Dung Beetles, artropods of the Scarabaeoidea superfamily of the Coleoptera order, are famous for a very strange relationship with their food. They feed on dung, and they do so by making a gigantic ball, somethings 10 times larger than their size, and roll it away in the search of a perfect place to bury it. They were given a sacred status by ancient Egyptians, who depicted them and their balls of dung, on the walls of their tombs and temples.
Encountering these beetles in the wild on the African savannah was genuinely unforgettable, and the more I learnt about their behavior, the more I realised how closely they resembled those of an entrepreneur. Remember those 8 key points from before? Let’s touch base on all 8 again, but this time, from the beetle’s prespective:
Relentless
Beetles orientate themselves by using very specific senses like magnetic fields or even the moon and the milky way, and will never allow anything stop them on their paths.Resilient
Sometimes bigger beetles steal the dung ball from other smaller beetles. The smaller ones, immediately start searching for new dung piles to make a new ball from.Insanely obsessed
Bettles were created to do one thing, which they turn into a lifetime mission. All day, all night, only one thought in their head. Find a dung, make a ball and roll it. Very few other things cross their minds.Dreamer
They will probably die with the feeling that they could have build a better and bigger ball. This idea hasn’t been scientificly proven.Leader
During mating season, male Dung Beetles lead females into the best areas where the soil will be soft enough to bury the dung ball with sucess to allow a whole new generation of beetles to emerge.Believer
Because he pushes the ball from behind and backwards, it can’t see where is it going. He blindly trusts his senses and luck, sure that the ball will find the correct path into his final destination.Not afraid of failure
He knows he may roll down a hill, find a wall it won’t be able to sort or stumble upon high grass that will prevent the ball from rolling. Still, he carries on knowing that trouble will come inevitably and is confident that will be able to overcome it somehow.Creative
I need to bring this dung with me. Hmm, how about I build a ball so it is easier to move around, plus I’ll make it huge so I don’t have to worry about finding one every second day.
Now, for the next minute, think of yourself as a dung beetle. Think of its ball as one of your ideas, projects or products.
The beetle carries his beloved lifetime achievement with him everywhere. Like you and your idea. Even when it goes to sleep, guards it. It won’t allow anyone come close to his ball. It will sometimes roll the ball to the wrong places out of fear or inexperience. It will may lose its ball to a larger more experienced beetle, but that will prepare him for it to not happen ever again. Young beetles, due to their smaller size and to minimize risks, they start with rather smaller and more manageble balls. And as they grow they build better, stronger and bigger ones. Same with your start-up. Starting with a rather small but more manageble ball project and increase it as you go, seems the most stablished best-practise out there.
Like anything in life, it may take you a few attempts but eventually, the combination of your resilience, creativity, determination, belief, leadership and obsession, will guide you through the winding trails and valleys of this tough savannah to your most desired success.
