On Leadership: Paulette Campbell

Is Your Business a Dead Hamster?
Paulette Campbell

When my brother was about seven, he and his best friend at the time, Rodney, bought hamsters as pets. This followed months of begging and pleading: promises to take care of them and basically to never let them leave their sides.

As the big sister, I wasn’t particularly interested. Mice, hamsters, guinea pigs, surely these are all vermin and are not as cute and cuddly as kittens-- so why the interest?

Anyway, in line with family expectations, Danny took limited good care of the hamster, treating it better than his bedroom but worse than his school shoes. (For some reason I think he called him John, but cant remember why.)

About two months after the boys got their pets, Rodney came to our house in tears ... his hamster had died in the night and he and his Dad had buried it in the garden.
Danny was livid. Apparently hamsters hibernate (who knew?) and so Rodney had buried his pet alive.

A few difficult days followed – well, a difficult morning first when Rodney tried to exhume his pet – with Danny refusing to let John out of his sight (bath time was particularly fun as I remember). But then, after two weeks of non-stop care and attention, Danny got bored and returned to behaving like a small boy.

Then one morning it happened. He got up to go to school and John appeared very still ... and not particularly warm. Well, after Rodney’s abandonment of the standards associated with quality pet-care, Danny was adamant that John was hibernating, and he would treat him well. Unfortunately, Danny was wrong and John was not hibernating, he was dead.

How do I know? Well, my parents, two sisters and I had to live with the smell of a rotting small rodent in the house for a few days, so we were pretty sure the little guy was not sleeping. Convincing Danny however, was not so simple; he refused to believe that his pet had died.

He sang to it, he made sure food and water was available for when John ‘woke up’, he moved the cage around the house with him so that John would see him as soon as he woke up. (Can I just say here that, unless you’ve played dominoes with your brother and his dead pet, you really haven’t experienced the full spectrum of family life?)

Anyway, after two months my Dad could stand it no more – he turned to my brother and said 'the rat’s dead; throw it away now son.’ Okay, perhaps not a sentence designed to promote good mental health in later years, but he had a point.

So, what has this to do with running a business? Well, quite simply – how do you know your business isn’t a dead hamster? (See how I switched the normal and well-known ‘flogging a dead horse’ analogy there, but it’s the same point really.)

No matter how enthusiastic and motivated you are about creating and running your own business, it will be a waste of time unless you acknowledge that your business is alive and in need of continuous attention and support, or else it will die.

Danny really, really wanted a pet, but was blind to what his pet needed. Looking at your business:

1. What is it that you really want?

2. What is it that your business really needs to survive?

3. Where do these needs conflict and contradict?

4. What do you need to do to close the gap?

5. Which elements of that are entirely up to you? Which elements are dependent on people or things outside your control?

6. What are some attitudes you could adopt to make it more likely that you will get what you want? What are some attitudes it might be useful to let go of?

7. Create an initial action list based on those things within your control that would make it more likely for your business to succeed. As new ideas come up, ask yourself:

a. Will this increase the likelihood of my getting what I want, either now or in the future?

b. Will this increase the likelihood of my business succeeding and surviving?


If you need any help working on a plan to move your life forward (before you die!), why not spend time with a personal and professional coach (such as myself!) and fine tune what you want and how you can go about securing it.

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Paulette Campbell is a personal and professional life coach addressing her clients fully and working with each aspect of their lives to overcome and acheive their personal and professional challenges and goals.