If you had to pick an animal of the African plains to describe yourself, which one would you come up with? Need some help?
Stefan Swanepoel's uses his new book "Surviving Your Serengeti" to create a nice, believable, engaging story of Sean Spencer and his wife Ashley from Los Angeles who take a trip to Africa - only to run into an old college roommate, Zachariah Makena, after years of no contact between the two of them.
Zachariah shares the secrets of the Serengeti from the animals' perspectives, begining with the most plentiful of all animals in the wild, the wildebeast. It's easy to see that we are supposed to draw parallels for our own lives from the way the animals exist, hunt, survive, and thrive in the wild in their environment.
There is even a brief quiz you can take to determine which of the seven animals (wildebeast, crocodile, giraffe, lion, elephant, cheetah, and mongoose) tendencies you possess the most. As with many typologies, there is rarely anyone who is purely one type or another. Rather a blend is more accurate. Therefore, in reading the descriptions of the animals, you may identify with one or more as expressing the traits you find in yourself - or even possibly the traits you wished you had or would like to have.
The nice thing about this quiz is that there is no way to "game" the quiz because you are really sure how your responses are to be used in determining the profile. We don't get to choose our animal and then have the quiz validate it. If you give a question a "6" instead of a "5" or "7" does that dramatically change which animal you'll be? Maybe. Can you trick the test? Not very likely - at least the first time you take it. Just answer the questions the best you can and see what result you get.
That said, I'm a crocodile, and I think that captures my entrepreneurial spirit and creativity. Are there traits from other animals that I think I have? Sure, but maybe not in a sufficient quantity to define my overall business approach or strategy.
In that we were only able to read the first 2 chapters of the book - the setting and part of the wildebeast, I'm thinking that in the rest of the book we are going to get an insight into each of the animals and how they use their strenths to survive - against the other animals, all with their own set of strenghts.
How we are to use and process that information and apply to our major animal personna will come after reading the rest of the book, which comes out next week on March 1st. Watch for it.
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Steve Hoffacker - Consultant, Coach, Author, Blogger, Photographer, Motivator, Teacher, & Strategist - for Realtors, Real Estate Sales Professionals, Home Builders, New Home Salespeople, Entrepreneurs, Small Business Owners, and Independent Sales Representatives.
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