Starting a company, for many young entrepreneurs, can feel like a wild adventure. It did and still does for me. The adventure is part of the thrill, but it can sometimes feel very out of control: Lack of client consistency, lack of customer consistency, management issues and more contribute to the struggle.
Control or lack thereof came up for me recently, in a Krav Maga class (a topic I’ve written about previously for Entrepreneur.com) when my instructor Mike and I were practicing knife fighting skills. He was teaching me how to disarm an attacker wielding a knife: in this case, a big 10-inch long knife. As I went through the drill, I was struggling. One part where I was supposed to put my hand over the hand of the assailant and break their wrist was particularly difficult.
“It’s about establishing control,” said Mike. “You need to take the knife away. This means you need to take control.”
A knife fight feels to me a lot like starting a business. In your daily entrepreneurial experience, people are coming at you with a million different threats but also ideas, suggestions and directions for the future of your business. They often come out of left field and sometimes with more intensity than seems warranted. To be a successful entrepreneur, though, you need to understand how to hear the ideas, how to counterattack the ideas and then how to establish control.
As a female entrepreneur and businessperson, getting and maintaining control is something that I have rarely been taught. Yet, the steps to creating control in any situation can be similar to those steps used in responding to a knife fight. You, too, can learn to take and establish control.
Checkpoint 1: Defend and respond.
When approached in a manner that is threatening or is a clear attack, your first job is to block the immediate threat. In a knife fight, this is physical. I’ll put up an arm to slow the blow. In business, it might be stepping into the conflict and addressing the topic head-on. Don’t shy away and wait, address the topic as soon as it arises.
Related: To Ignite Explosive Business Growth Take Control of These 4 Areas of Your Life
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