Last month was all about the pets in our household and definitely reflected the themes of persistence and commitment. It never ceases to amaze me how our general life challenges have many lessons for us to learn, if we pay attention to what is happening and I’ll explain how my challenges with my pets assimilates into business later.

Firstly Keiko my eclectic parrot laid 2 eggs, which brought on a whole series of questions as to how to deal with a broody bird and what is the correct thing to do for her. A series of calls to bird experts and the good old internet research gave me the information I needed.

Belle, one of our cats, has been very sick this last month and for a week she didn’t eat anything. Yes we went to the vets, and I tried all kinds of different foods in different ways to entice her into eating. I spent many hours thinking of new options and creative ways to encourage her to eat. It wasn’t until I spoke to another animal expert who gave me some other ideas that eventually I managed to get her to start eating a little bit of food.

A great BIG thank you to Robyn Kesnow Animal RN for her expertise in providing me with some other different options even when I thought I had tried most everything. It took a lot of time, patience, persistence and sheer determination with lots of love to keep our cat alive, we nearly lost her.

These challenges made me reflect on entrepreneurs with their businesses. When we are passionate and love what we do, we have a lot of enthusiasm, creativity, energy, and we try all kinds of different things at the beginning to make it work. But do we truly persist, day after day in the same way that we would for someone we love, a pet or even a child, family member or friend for that matter, if things aren’t going the way we want them? When do we give up? How often do we reach out to experts for advice and guidance and not just one expert, maybe two or three as each one has a different perspective on what you’re trying to achieve.

With Belle, the vet had given me tablets, examined her, and given me some guidance, Robyn, however, also gave me some other options and ideas to try as well, and it took both experts as well as much commitment and persistence on my part to bring Belle back to health.

It is important if we are truly committed to our businesses and love what we do, to take it seriously and monitor the health of our business, reach out to experts, mentors and accountability partners and truly persist in what we are trying to achieve.

Do we know the tell tale signs of sickness with our business as we would for ourselves as humans or for our pets? Is your business “off color”, and how would you know? Only by doing this will we gain success.