Be a s**t beetle
There are lots of analogies that compare start-ups with the (sometimes fictitious) animal kingdom. You have heard about unicorns, centaurs, stallions, little ponies, lions and even cockroaches. But while your start-up may at times feel like one of those creatures, the animal that, in my view, comes closest to describing the day-to-day activities of a founder is the Scarabaeidae Scarabaeinae, commonly known as the dung beetle or as we liked to call it in my last company: the s**t beetle.
Definition: “Dung beetle, (subfamily Scarabaeinae), also called dung chafer or tumblebug, any of a group of beetles in the family Scarabaeidae that forms manure into a ball, which are used as a food source or breeding chambers, using its scooper-like head and paddle-shaped antennae.”
While the comparison to the other animals describes a snap-shot of the size or valuation of your business, the dung beetle reflects more the regular duties of a founder or founding team: You take the s**t that lands on your desk and make sure that it doesn’t pile up or overflow. Instead, you actually put it to good use as fertiliser for your company culture (nothing forms stronger bonds in a company than going through a challenge/ adversity together and overcoming it as a team).
Many years ago I read about a brit turned buddhist monk and subsequently bought his book ‘Who Ordered This Truckload of Dung?: Inspiring Stories for Welcoming Life’s Difficulties’. It comprises of a few short stories on life lessons when facing adversity, but the main story is around what you do when life gives you s**t.
It describes your life as a house with a garden in which sometimes someone puts a massive load of dung in your front yard. Now there are two ways you can react: get angry & upset, ask the question ‘Why me?’ and ‘Why do bad things always happen to me?’ OR choose to see that truckload of dung as fertiliser for your garden, and get going to move it away with your wheel-barrow and shovel. I’m not saying people are either on one side or the other, but the earlier you get to the second stage, the sooner you will actually start making progress and start learning.
Reflecting that onto the start-up world, there are tons of things that go wrong, unfortunately almost on a daily basis. And even founders of praised start-ups deal with s**t most of the time and only briefly get to enjoy the status of unicorn, stallion, little pony or whatever (as it is just a snapshot in time).
You actually learn to be comfortable with the uncomfortable and also adjust your expectations. It’s not about creating an environment where everything is perfect, but creating one where everyone has the right mindset to deal with the internal and external challenges that certainly come up when your business makes progress (or even when it doesn’t).
When things are not going according to plan or you get screwed over, well, you know what to do. Get your shovel ready and be a s**t beetle.
