Part of any black belt grading in Aikido is dealing with a multiple person attack. Typically this is five other black belts coming at you.

What we are taught is to turn the circle into a line. If the attackers were being accommodating they would all line up, and then attack one at a time. Of course they aren’t accommodating. They form a circle around you, and if you stand still like a rabbit in the headlights (or worse still, retreat) you’ll end up having five people on you at the same time (and unless you’re Steven Seagal, that’s not going to turn out well).

So what we attempt to do is move so that the attackers end up in a line, and we deal with them one at a time.

Last week at Thought Leaders Business School we had 50 brilliant thought leaders in a room for three days getting stacked up with everything they need to do over the next quarter in their practice. And for some of us the list of projects and tasks on our Dashboard would make facing five black belts feel like a walk in the path.

I love what one of the students in the program, Matt Lumsdaine, said: One cluster, one sale. Make that first sale, do the job fantastically well and it will all grow from that.

Basically pick one offering. And even if you have 24 sales calls to make, your first job is just to make the first one. Turn the circle into a line, and do the next one thing.

Love to hear your thoughts – what’s your next one thing? You can leave your comments below.