As unexpected as a kangaroo?

If the unexpected jumps into your life, how will you cope? KIRSTY DUNPHEY

By Kirsty Dunphey

As I sat this morning eating my breakfast cereal I saw a brown something move out of the corner of my eye. Investigating further I saw, not a cat, not a dog, but a kangaroo* making its way through my front yard.

I was stunned and scrambled to grab my camera managing to get the very un-Attenborough-worthy shot at right before my new furry neighbour moved along.

I text messaged my husband immediately with my exciting news. His response was much less excitement than mine. He’d seen this kangaroo before and in fact he was quite the regular in our yard apparently.

So something that blew my mind was a non-event for my husband because of his past conditioning.

Which lead me to compare it to the business world.

For the inexperienced, a disaster blows your mind. Could be… your best staff member leaves, your boss announced your redundancy, your major client gives you the flick, your company gets bought out… you’re a virgin kangaroo viewer and your whole world gets shaken.

For the person who’s been there and seen or done that, the disaster happens but it’s met with experience which lessens the impact. You’re the kangaroo whisperer (like my husband)!

So what can you to do become a kangaroo whisperer without actually having a kangaroo (or a disaster fall into your lap?)

Imagine the kangaroo
Spend a couple of minutes and write down the five worst things that could happen in your business right now.

Make friends with the kangaroo
Is there anything you can do right now to lesson the chance of any of those five worst things happening? Get jumping.

What would you do if there were a kangaroo?
If you can’t remove the possibility, you can at least spend a little time preparing for it.

If your “worst thing” is your biggest client giving you the flick, how can you increase the service, how can you increase their loyalty. Perhaps you don’t even want to keep them at all? And there’s no harm at all in preparing for a worst case scenario.

Now don’t get me wrong here – this is a 10 minute exercise, spending all day focusing on your kangaroos is dull, a little depressing and not nearly as much fun as finding one in your front yard.

* If this is actually a wallaby and not a kangaroo, forgive me, contrary to some of my US readers popular belief, I haven’t seen that many kangaroos and I’m certainly not accustomed to either kangaroos or wallabies bounding through my front yard!

Kirsty Dunphey is one of Australia’s most publicised young entrepreneurs and is the founder of www.reallysold.com – a tool to help real estate agents create advertisements. The youngest ever winner of the Australian Telstra Young Business Woman of the Year award, Kirsty started her first business at 15, her own real estate agency at 21, was a self-made millionaire at 23 and a self-made multi-millionaire at 25. For more information on Kirsty or either of her books – Advance to Go, Collect $1 Million and Retired at 27, If I can do it anyone can, or to sign up to her weekly newsletter head to: www.kirstydunphey.com

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