Most people love cats or dogs. Maybe birds.

Shoot, even reptiles. Snakes. Hamsters. Gerbils. (Seriously, gerbils?)

I love the dung beetle.

I know, it just seems so wrong. I think the immediate response of most people has to be “huh,” or some more colorful derivation thereof.

A great many people simply stare at me blank-faced and ask, “why?”

Good question.

Let me slip on my pointy pontificating hat and ponder an appropriate reply.

I would ask that you pause for just a wavering moment and carefully contemplate what the dung beetle accomplishes.

It takes what we regard as an absolutely repugnant by-product of living (e.g., scat, poop, excrement, dung, fecal matter, sh*t) and instead of stepping gingerly around it and moving on, the dung beetle labors feverishly to accumulate, organize into a spherical shape and then roll the “fruits of its labor” back to his or her abode.

Where the dung beetle uses said ball of smelly goo to feed and raise its young. Thereby allowing the lowly dung beetle to replicate, survive, and subdue its world.

The dung beetle is an awesome role model for any human.

Here’s why –>

Think about how much crap all of us deal with on a daily basis.

And lately, it’s quite a bit.

It might come from our boss, from our clients, from our co-workers, from our spouse, from our friends, from our relatives, from Internet social media, from mainstream media, from non-mainstream media, from the government – basically from a wide and seemingly endless list of sources.

Sigh.

Generally, from the Cosmos as a hole. I mean, a whole.

In fact, someone, somewhere, at one time or the other went full frontal dung beetle and made a lot of money with a simple bumper sticker that merely states the dung beetle motto – “Sh*t Happens.” For the sake of a more genteel discussion, we will use the less offensive term “poo” so as not to offend the Internet’s automated word censors.

Having reflected on the success of the dung beetle, I am immensely happy that poo happens.

Poo gives us opportunities – in life for sure, but especially in business. It doesn’t matter whether you own a business or work for someone else. The poo that you see on a daily basis is your opportunity to make yourself useful and valuable, because you can locate the seemingly foul poo, step right in it, organize it, shape it into a nice little ball, and roll it away for a useful purpose.

Best of all – you can actually get paid for messing around with poo and making something valuable from it because most people just complain and run down the hallway crying about the horrible poo.

Dang it, why does my spell-checker keep flagging poo?

Anyway. the next time poo happens to you – regardless of the source – make a careful evaluation of how you can turn a disgusting by-product of existence into something useful and valuable.

The ensuing success may just surprise the poo out of you.

–E