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Key Takeaways
- The risks of ignoring your feelings usually outweigh the price of following them.
- Instinct can save your business when strategy isn’t enough.
- Not only can you trust your instincts, but you also can’t ignore them.
Last year my neighborhood in Seattle was hit by a bomb cyclone. It’s exactly as bad as it sounds: winds of 80 miles per hour and trees 160 feet tall that can crush a house like a toothpick.
This particular night the wind howled louder than I have ever heard it before or since. Whole branches flew through the garden. Huge trees swayed violently, bending further than seemed possible. I remember looking into my neighbor’s yard and turning to my wife and saying, “If I don’t get them out of their house, they’ll be dead by morning.”
I can’t tell you why I felt this so strongly. I just knew it in my gut.
Related: How to Confidently Trust Your Guts, According to an Expert on Intuition
The risks of ignoring your feelings usually outweigh the price of following them
With that I ran to my neighbor’s house. Going out in the dark was risky, but nothing compared to what I feared would happen if I didn’t.
I finally convinced them to come over, insisting that they bring the whole family, including their dog. They probably thought I was ridiculous. But I was right to warn them.
That night a falling pine split their house in two. It landed on top of their king-sized bed, with one of the branches even flattening the dog’s mattress.
After seeing the damage, my neighbor hugged me with tears in her eyes and thanked me for saving their lives. It was an emotional moment, one that I have thought about often since.
I travel a lot for work and I’ve often wondered what if I hadn’t been home that evening. But the much bigger ‘what if’ was: WWhat if I had ignored my feelings?
When your intuition is calling you to take action, you better listen.
Related: How to Unlock the Full Power of Your Intuition
Instinct can save your business when strategy isn’t enough
Twenty-four days after I became CEO of PhoneBurner, the FCC issued a public notice instructing carriers to block traffic from one of our customers. We immediately removed that customer and took all necessary steps to limit the impact, but the broad language of the notice led carriers to block all PhoneBurner calls. Within hours, our entire platform was offline.
This was a crisis. Thousands of real estate, insurance, mortgage and other professionals trusted us powerful calling platform to get in touch with their contacts on a daily basis. If we couldn’t get their calls through, we could go under in a few days.
So I started emailing and calling everyone I knew, trying to find someone who could trust me enough to give us a dial tone. I’d be lying if I told you there was some grand strategy at work. I acted on instinct and did what was necessary to keep us alive.
The message was published on Tuesday. Thursday evening I still had nothing. I hadn’t eaten or slept. I had called everyone I knew, from Seattle to Singapore, looking for someone, anyone, who might be able to help.
Finally, my wife insisted that I go out and get a pizza. She knew I needed to eat, but also that I would go crazy if I didn’t take a few minutes to leave the house.
Along the way I stopped in the parking lot of a nearby park. Needing a moment of solitude, I picked up my phone and opened it with a Bible verse that brings me comfort in difficult times:
“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him.” (Romans 8:28)
As I sat there, I suddenly had the overwhelming feeling that I needed to go through every contact on my phone again to see if I had somehow missed anyone related to telephony who could help. My feeling was screaming that I knew the right person. I just hadn’t found them yet.
I eventually ran into an industry contact in Miami who I hadn’t spoken to in a long time. It was already 9pm on the east coast, but I texted and asked him to call me.
When he did, I explained the situation, and to my surprise, he knew someone in Santa Monica who might be able to help.
That person was in the middle of a fundraising event when he replied. But I risked everything to ask if they could get a dial tone in the morning. He said he would have their co-founder call me back.
At 2am I got his call. His first words were that his lawyers were against it because of the risk. But he said he was touched by my sincerity and tenacity, and that he would take the chance.
At half past four that morning we had a dial tone again.
Related: How to ask people for favors when you don’t feel comfortable doing so
You Can’t Just Trust Your Instinct (But You Can’t Ignore It Either)
Of course, everything did not immediately return to normal. To say the recovery was difficult is putting it mildly. It was more like running a marathon after open heart surgery. But thanks to the dedication of my team and the reputation we built with customers over more than a decade, we were able to bring PhoneBurner from the brink of collapse back to solid ground, more focused and unified than ever.
I believe my little detour that evening – guided by nothing more than intuition and a generous side of desperation – helped us survive, so we could keep running. And once we got back on our feet, careful strategy kept us moving in the right direction.
The moral of the story is this: you can’t run a business on instinct alone, but you can’t afford to ignore it either. Instinct is not magic. It’s experience, pattern recognition, and wisdom that appear faster than your brain can explain it. Some of the best decisions you’ll ever make start that way – as feelings you can’t quite explain, but you know you have to trust.
Related: Embracing the Unknown: Understanding Faith