Going with Your Gut: The Business Owner’s Guide

Have you heard the expression ‘going with your gut’? At Stillwell + Co, we use this feeling to guide so much of where we are going. Going with your gut is also known as using your intuition. Let’s be real, as business owners, we use this a lot - or at least, we should be. Your intuition is like a sixth sense that can help guide everything you do. From hiring new employees to determining if a client is a good fit, tapping into your gut feeling can deliver better results for your business.

Listening to your intuition isn’t as woo-woo as it sounds. Intuition simply refers to our ability as humans to subconsciously receive information. Basically, our brains are relaying subconscious messages to our central nervous system which give us a good or bad feeling. As Henri Poincare once wrote “It is through science that we prove, but through intuition that we discover”. So, why would someone use intuition to help guide them in business? By learning to operate intuitively, one can achieve better business results by trusting themselves and following their heart and mission to achieve success.

Operating Intuitively

We know that intuition is all subconscious, so how do we tune in to our subconscious mind and recognize the signals our intuition is trying to send? The short answer: it feels different for everyone. You might experience physical symptoms like a stomachache, goosebumps, butterflies, or sweating. Other feelings you may experience are sudden doubt, dread, or the feeling that something is just ‘off’.

Being mindful and present in the current moment helps your body to pick up on more of the subconscious things happening around you. When you’re living in the now, your brain can more easily predict what will happen next.

At Stillwell+Co, we have put into practice a few mindfulness activities daily. First and foremost, we spend time reading and praying each morning. Second, we take morning and afternoon pauses for one to three minutes utilizing our app of choice. Third, we put our phones away after 9:00 PM nightly to ensure we are “tuning out” before we go to sleep.

Whatever your choice is, each of these opportunities allow you to operate intuitively by giving your brain the downtime it needs to truly listen to what you hear your heart (or your spiritual side) telling you.

Better Business Results

So how can listening to your intuition help you achieve better business results? Using this sixth sense can help you follow your divine purpose, find your why, craft a forward vision, and swiftly avoid disaster. The more you use your intuition, the more it works. Your intuition will help guide you to the next steps in achieving your business dreams and give you the green light when you’re meeting the right people that can help you achieve those goals.

Intuition can also help us avoid disaster by sending those strong feelings to our central nervous system. If you are meeting with a potential client and you are feeling like something is off, chances are, it’s not the right partnership for you.

Intuition is meant to work side by side with data to help businesses tune in to their target market. When you are in the mindset of your customers, you innately understand how they recieve messages and are able to connect on a deeper level. In marketing, using this sixth sense is a skill you have to have. As a business owner, it’s important to recognize your customer’s way of thinking and how your messaging can be revised to improve their perception of you.

We believe that you often have the answers you need to the problems you face, but you simply don’t trust yourself. One of the first things we address with our clients is overcoming any obstacles to absolute confidence in their own decision making. We work diligently to ensure that your ideas are considered, even if you’ve already negated them in your own mind. Chances are, and time has proven, that most of the time those ideas are the most applicable to your potential and current customers and are often the most effective, too!

The more you trust your intuition, the more empowered you become, the stronger you become, and the happier you become.

-Gisele Bundchen

Trust Yourself

Remember when we mentioned those physical symptoms? You know, the stomachache, sweating, butterflies, those pesky goosebumps? As a business owner, when you’re experiencing symptoms like this around a potential employee, work partner, or client - run! Okay, we’re officially suggesting politely exiting the room. Whether you walk or run, the point remains the same: trusting yourself means listening to these signs and looking for them on a day-to-day basis to help guide you in the right direction.

Leaning into your intuition may also make you more decisive. You may get an immediate feeling about a decision you have to make that can tell you if it’s right for you or not. Basically, making decisions gets a lot easier when you ‘go with your gut’.

If you made it this far, we thank you for following your intuition and trusting us enough to read through this entire article! To recap, using your intuition will get you far in business and in life. Try to operate your business from an intuitive standpoint, work towards achieving better business results with your intuition, and lastly, trust yourself. In life and business, some things may just not be quite right, or they might be so right it hurts! Don’t ignore those feelings, lean into them and let them guide you.

Feeling like your intuition led you here? It’s time to schedule a chat.