Episode 422: Unlocking Your Intuition with Wendy De Rosa

Welcome to another episode of the Above the Business podcast. My name is Bradley Hamner, your host. On today's episode, we have Wendy DeRosa. We talk about a couple things we haven't talked about maybe much at all on the podcast in a number of years, and we're going to talk about burnout. We're going to talk about intuition specifically. So how do we marry data-driven thinking, time decision-making, along with our gut and our intuition? And then how do we manage burnout as a business owner and entrepreneur? And what are the experiences? What does that look like and feel like? And What are some things that we can do about it? Without further ado, here's my conversation with Wendy DeRosa. Wendy, welcome to the Above the Business podcast.

Thank you so much for having me, Bradley.

Excited to have you. We'd love to start with background and origin story, kind of get people to kind of take us back and bring us to present day, how you got to where you are.

Yeah, so I have a gift. I've had a gift as a really young age, at a really young age, of being intuitive. I didn't know it was a gift. I thought it was a problem. And the more I treated it as a problem or thought it was a problem, the bigger the issue would become. It developed anxiety and a lot of different symptoms. And then when I started to understand that this is really intuition and I needed to turn to it, a lot of my symptoms dissipated and I started to move in this direction of developing it. I had a private practice. This was 30 years ago, so I've had a private practice. The, you know, the good first, whatever, 15, 20 years. And, um, in that time developed the school. I became a founder of a school called the School of Intuitive Studies, and I, um, taught on global platforms, um, taught around the world, wrote 4 books. I'm working on my next book right now that's due out next year. People wanted to learn how to do what I do, so I started teaching the work. And recently, in the past I don't know, maybe decade, a lot of founders have been coming to me to understand more about intuition and to work on themselves in this capacity.

So we're going to talk about intuition in just a little bit. But one of the things that you had mentioned, and at the time that we're recording this, we're towards the end of 2024. And so this has come up actually For, for a lot of the business owners that I work with have expressed, you know, that some, some level they may— a couple of them have used the word burnout, but some people are maybe experiencing that. I mean, they're tired. They're tired going into the year and they want to try to find some level the next few weeks to be able to, to try to rest and recharge. Um, but Even so, they're probably going to go into 2025 and not many things are going to change. And so there's likely to kind of repeat the feeling of burnout. Can you just talk about in your work, what are some of the symptoms? There's probably some obvious ones, but then there's also some subtle ones that we may not be necessarily aware of. And then what are some practical things that business owners and entrepreneurs can do to help alleviate that and not just, you know, deal with it in the moment, but to really try to keep it to where it doesn't come back, so to speak.

Yeah, absolutely. So I think we can probably, you know, Google or ChatGPT burnout and come up with a lot of different symptoms and articles and, you know, theories on burnout. And some of it's scientific. It's not theories, there's deeper understanding of burnout, and they can range from a fatigue and an apathy and compassion fatigue, meaning losing the ability to be able to care about anything that's right in front of us. And everything from low appetite and difficulty eating and disconnection in our relationships, et cetera. And there are quite a bit of, um, symptoms that can range from physiological to emotional. And the physiological aspect of burnout can, um, impact our adrenal glands, our brain, how we function. But I want to just dive into a little bit more on a deeper level of burnout. Because I think it could be helpful going into 2025 for people. So it's not the answer, it's an— it's a portion of the answer and how we can support ourselves through it. So we can't negate the fact as business owners, founders, entrepreneurs, that there— we manage a lot. I mean, we don't always have boundaries around our work hours. We have to work through the weekends sometimes. We're responding a lot to a lot of intake. During the day, etc. And it's— there is— we're managing a collective, you know, we're managing what's going on between teams and, you know, the bottom line, etc. So we can't negate the fact that there's a collective component outside of us. But intuition is our, our soul. If I were to get a little deep here, our soul communicating to us through the, the consciousness of our body. And what that means is our body gives us signals, our insights will give us signals, our mind will give us signals. We will get signals from within. And a lot of times we— there are a lot of check engine lights before we get to the point of burnout. And those check engine lights can range from Gosh, I'm really— I'm just a little extra tired this morning. Or it can range from signals physiologically, like I'm not taking— I can tell I'm not taking care of my body. I feel like I ate too much sugar today, or I drank 5 cups of coffee to get through the day. We can have a lot of signals throughout our day to tell us that something isn't firing. Exactly. And when we ignore those signals internally inside ourselves, we go further down the route of burnout because at this point we're neglecting our intuition. We're neglecting the internal signals that are occurring. Some of them are mental. Some of it, like, we know better. You know, we know our mind knows what we should be doing and we're not doing it because we're caught caught in the, you know, sometimes the, the habit, or we're caught in the rhythm, or the even the addiction of work. And sometimes, you know, it's literally the body giving us that information. So when it comes to burnout, and especially going into 2025, there's, you know, there really is a call in many ways to, for, for self-care and for work-life balance. And for empathy and for listening to ourselves. And those are all aspects that guide us back to ourselves to pay attention.

So, but here's the challenge. I'm a driven, bust-my-you-know-what entrepreneur. I got a big vision. I got big goals. No, no.

Yeah.

That's all soft stuff. I, I'm not going to do it. I'm going to push through it. I don't have time to check this thing down into neutral. You know, I'm just saying, this is what some people, you know, say. They're just like, I get it. And until a major— something major happens, right, that it can be, I need to push, I need to push through, I need to work. Harder. And look, let's be real, if you're an entrepreneur, you don't need to be told that you need to work hard. You already know that, right? I mean, so it's just, it's just an, it's just inherent. Like, it's just assumed you, you know that you have to do that. But I think that that is the, I think that that's the, um, almost the, you know, the subconscious saying that, to say like, yeah, I know I need to take care of myself, that kind of thing, but I got these big things that I'm, I'm trying to either strive for, or, yeah, but Wendy, you don't understand, like, if we don't do this, these bad things are going to happen. We're going to hit— we're going to miss targets, we're going to miss revenue goals, etc. And what I think is, I think it gets hard as the entrepreneur, the business owner, to balance those those things. That's, that's still because they can hear you and I hear you. It's just like, yeah, but I want both.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And to say, I just want to bring in this element. So obviously, I'm an intuitive and I taught, you know, in this field for so long. But the best business conversations and decisions I've made is through bike racing. I used to race bikes. So I was a competitive cyclist. And while I was racing, the communities that which I was racing with, were all entrepreneurs and business owners and people that were adrenaline— we were adrenaline junkies. That's what we did for a living. But it was part of our counterbalance, was to be able to have these opportunities to have conversations and connect and work that muscle of, you know, a really adrenaline innovation visionary sense, etc. Because when you do exercise at that level, you are less emotional. You're more processing what's going on. So even when we're talking about taking care of yourself, it doesn't always look like I am, um, you know, I'm, I'm backing off from the drive. I'm backing off from, you know, whatever, moving forward in my business and keeping it going. But it is about doing something that feeds your soul or feeds your body and takes care of yourself. My husband and I weightlift every morning. That's our— we have a gym in the basement. That's how we take care of our physical body. So that being said, I think there is, in my experience, part of staying in, not burning out, really, is about staying in balance. So how do we counterbalance the drive with something that is going to be I will say a level of softening, but the softening might be I'm spending time with my family. I am turning off the phone for the weekend or for half a day, or I am going out to take a walk or whatever it might be. It's just something that takes it down a notch because I will tell you, adrenal fatigue is real and all genders experience adrenal fatigue. So if we are pumping cortisol constantly through our work life, and through some other way we're taking care of ourselves, there is going to be a crash at some point or another. So how do we listen to what do I need? What is my— what's the soul food my system needs right now?

Yeah, yeah. Speaking of this, is there— is it really like decision fatigue with this too, to where, you know, throughout— I mean, this could be kind of for a day, sure.

Yeah.

But also over a week, but even longer, there can be just a period where it's just like, it's just, you, there's been too much like weight, so to speak, too many decisions, too many initiatives, too many changes, etc., that, that culminate again, sure, in a day, but I'm also thinking kind of outside the bounds of just an individual day. Like, I mean, I've had days specifically— my EA Courtney and I have worked on this— where, hey, you know what, that was too many hours on Zoom. That was just too— that was too long. We, we're, we're going to put guidelines around that. And even looking at specifically for me, um, like screen time— I don't mean even screen time on my phone, I'm talking about computer screen time— because, you know, I'd have a couple hours in the morning and then it's like calls during the day, and then there's at night. And before you know it, it's like, wow, I've been in front of my computer screen for 8 hours. It's just, it's just too much, you know. And so trying to like, uh, put guardrails on that on an individual day as an example, you can really get to where it's like, it's just too much. It's just, you know, one day, sure, but then you stack up so many of those days back to back to back to back to back, then that's where it gets to be too much. For me, it does.

Yeah, I think that's really well said, and that is also a contributing factor to burnout, is that screen fatigue, technology fatigue. Um, you know, if we can plan ahead and set those boundaries in place— these are the hours I'm going to be on the screen— that's great, that's ideal. Sometimes we're in it and we, you know, we've already too far in and we can't back out because there's so many meetings or whatever it might be. So And then I would say, what's the counterbalance at the end of the day that would reset? Yeah, you know, reset us. And it's going to be different for different people, what that counterbalance could look like, but it would have to be some level of booting down our computer.

Yeah, don't you think? Okay, so those listening to the podcast are going to know, like, I love to play golf, you know, and there's been seasons where I can look back on and say, you know, I didn't play enough golf. And sure, there's the enjoyment of the game itself. No, don't, don't get me wrong, I enjoy playing, I enjoy the competitiveness, I enjoy being outside. But there's even, like you said, there's so much more to, to just, um, being, um, being out in nature, but also doing something you love. And the downregulation, almost like— I like the word counterbalancing the, the work aspect. I'll tell you one thing that I did, um, actually just recently recorded a podcast on this, um, called Analog, and, uh, where I have really intentionally gone back way more to analog, like paper, uh, planners and reading physical books. I got into where I was reading, uh, listening to a lot of Audible books, went totally away from that, uh, all these kind of things. Anyway, I don't want to make this about me, but I'm giving to a point to where there was a period when I would go play golf or more, more specifically, maybe go hit balls, you know, just practice for an hour and a half. And I would have a podcast in my earbuds. Well, now, no, I don't do that anymore. No, now it's just music. It's just music. There's no inputs into it. And that really helps me because if I went out to the golf course by myself or to hit balls and I'm listening to a business podcast, I wasn't downregulating myself. Like I was actually still up here even though I was out on the golf course. Does that make sense?

Yeah, 100%. And in, you know, in my work, we call that grounding. Like you are becoming— we are— we become more grounded in ourselves when we're out in nature when we're really making conscious choices about what's good for us right now. And sometimes that's reevaluating it constantly. What is okay for me now that wasn't okay for me before, and vice versa, you know, becoming more grounded as a leader in business or in, you know, in leadership is about those self-check-ins, those pauses, those I've got to remove myself and have a self in relation to my business, differentiate so that I can make better business decisions and choices that are based on what's needed.

Yeah. So one thing that we talked about before, and you've mentioned it a couple of times, is intuition. So before we hit record, you and I had a quick discussion about this. So tell me, what is intuition? How would you define that? And how do you believe leaders, entrepreneurs, business owners need to harness their intuition to be able to make better decisions in their companies?

Yeah, so, so intuition. So I'm going to bring in again that soul element, which is really that our intuition is the way in which our energetic system gives us those signals. And I say that our soul communicates with us, gives us information from within. And some people are what I like to call upper body intuitives. They're the visionaries, they're the communicators, they are Um, they are the visionaries, they are the communicators, they are perhaps the public speakers. They are the, um, they have the ability to be able to have the, the ability to communicate information into the world, but they also hear things. They get their higher guidance, their downloads. They have a channel of genius. They're the innovators. Then we have more of the lower body intuitives, and they are more of the gut, and that's the gut piece. Like, they get it on a physiological level. They feel it. They know. They know because they know because they know, and they can't tell you how they know. They just know. And then we have our empaths, the people who feel and have empathy and feel what other people are feeling and needing and try to meet those needs. Based on that felt sense. So we have different aspects, different archetypes, so to speak, of intuitives in business. And so when we know our strengths, which one of our intuitive, you know, senses are strong, we can turn towards that to gather information about, you know, answers to questions or decisions we need to make. We can actually tune in. To that aspect of our intuition.

So tell me about, for me, when I look back, and I know in working with other business owners, they felt this too, some of the worst decisions that I've made, I've made emotionally.

Yeah.

And so we really value, I think, I think we actually call it the most important thing you do for you, your team, and your business. The most important thing you do for you, protect your confidence. Most important thing to do for your team, Give them your energy. Most important thing you do for the business is think about the business. And so I'm curious your thoughts on this idea of thinking about the business versus my intuition and gut, because I've actually even verbally said gut is gave up thinking. Um, and so, you know, I'm not completely trying to throw out intuition and say it plays no part. I mean, sure it does. I was actually listening to, uh, a podcast called Acquired, and they had Howard Schultz on there talking about— it was a 3-hour podcast about— shout out to Tyler, who's a listener, about introducing me to that podcast, by the way. But it's— he's telling, you know, the story of Starbucks, and there were so many decisions he made in those early years that were intuition. I mean, it's intuition. He just said, I felt we needed to go to Los Angeles in the early years, right? And told that story. Great. But there's also so many decisions, you know, that we make on a whim, you know, and look back on it, go, you know, if I'd actually just thought through that, um, you know, I probably should have given that a little bit more thought instead of being emotional about it. There's a— I'll give one other example and then I'll give your thoughts. Now, it's a really long question, but I'm trying to give context here. So there's a business owner I work with that's about to make a decision to potentially import. Like, he has a vision of what he wants to do, to import some material from Europe to be able to do what they do. This is a multimillion-dollar decision. Okay, well, you can have all the intuition in the world, but if the financial forecasts don't match, like you know, actually spreadsheet this thing out to make sure, that could be, that could be the downfall of the company, quite frankly, right? I mean, if it, if it's made on a whim, so to speak. So how do we marry the two?

Yeah, well, one of the— I talk to a lot, a lot of CEOs about this. Data feedback and intuitive feedback have equal weight. There is not one better than the other. We just have to know when to use which. So as a business owner myself, I have to rely on data also. I have to look at the reports, I have to look at the numbers and the information to be able to make, you know, sort of intuitive decisions based on that information. Sometimes there are times where the data says one thing, but in order to create strategy, I have to blend a little more intuition in the direction of where I want to go based on what I think market trends might be ahead. You know, I had— there's a, there's a balance between the two, always going to be, um, it's always going to be the case. You know, every— if you, you could, again, anyone can look this up. If you Google or, you know, type it into chat, you know, who, what did the top CEOs, Fortune 500 companies, or CEOs talk about intuition, you're going to see all of the bigwigs talked about intuition. They all used intuition. But again, we can't mutually exclude— exclusively, we can't exclusively use intuition to make decisions. We do need the data. But what is really important is, is the, the power of waiting sometimes. And that's where the emotional decision-making does slow down. A little bit because excitement and yes, I'm feeling a yes on this and oh, no way, we can't do this, or I'm going to make an urgent decision. All of those are emotional decisions. But if we sleep on it or give it a week or give it a pause, we would have time to let that emotional component settle down a little bit to where we might be able to make again an intuitive and rational decision. We can check back in, do I still feel like this is the direction? Yeah, it's not escaping me. I can't stop thinking about it. I really feel we need to move in this direction. At that point, it's more of a grounded intuitive decision. When we pause, we have the opportunity to review the data also that might be available. And data feedback includes conversations with team members and advisors and people who might want to give their input too. That's all irrelevant data that we might need to help make that intuitive decision. So where we as leaders become really effective in intuitive decision-making is when we, we don't neglect that data is a very big important part of it, but we learn how to take in the feedback and the data and the information and check in with ourselves about, you know, how am I, how do I feel about this, and You know, we make the best possible decision based on both.

Yeah. Yeah. It would be remiss if we didn't tie back, um, intuition in a place of burnout, right? If you're in burnout, I mean, it just likely seems that your intuition's going to be blurred. I mean, you're just not gonna— I mean, there's been times even recently, last couple weeks, I was actually sharing this with somebody like I could just tell— I don't, I don't know if it was brain fog. I don't think that was it. You could tell that like the, the, the things weren't firing on all cylinders in my brain. Like I couldn't— struggling to, to kind of work through it as, as clearly as I wanted to, even if it was being matched with some data. I was kind of like, yeah, but I just, I don't know, I don't have a— I don't have really a good feel for, for this right now. And Yeah, I think it was just a kind of a period where, like, I just didn't need to be making, making some big decisions in the business in that type of, type of a state. Any, any thoughts there on kind of burnout and intuition, how they kind of don't work necessarily hand in hand, but when we're in those, the state of burnout, how our intuition can be challenged?

Yeah, I think that's a great example of what it can look like when we are burnt out, it's absolutely true. We— our intuition is not going to be on. We can't make the best decisions. If we make a decision out of burnout, sometimes we're making the decision that's going to help survival, not necessarily, necessarily thriving. So we have to be— our cup has to be full, or, you know, at least 3/4 full to get to the point where we're actually able to make decisions from feeling more, again, connected or thriving. And I just want to say that the reason I'm saying 3/4 full is because considering busy entrepreneurs and business owners, sometimes as much as we can do is good enough. Yeah, there's sometimes we can bring in that like perfectionism or that, you know, that drive energy into our own self-care. And sometimes, like, a little bit is good enough, and a little bit more on top of that is even better. We do it incrementally, but sometimes we can only get our cup 3/4 full, and that's good. That's progress. You know, then we only hope we go further from there, but Yeah, yeah.

Wendy, how do you work with people and how can people, uh, find you, connect with you?

Yeah, so I work, I work with founders and executives and, you know, business owners, um, one-on-one, and I do so through my website. It's wendyderosa.com. I also run different training programs and I run a podcast and, uh, and I have several books out. So, um, you can find anything at all my things at wendyderosa.com. That's where everything is.

Yeah, awesome. Well, the name of the podcast is Above the Business. What do you think, from your perspective, working above the business means to you?

I think for me it means, um, similar to not working inside the business but working on the business. But I think it— for me, it's about taking it to another level of bringing in more of that intuitive grounding alignment meditative approach, which also might— could be another word is manifesting. So bringing in that ability to, to bring in another level of, um, thought, of consciousness, of awareness into my why. Why am I doing this and how can I serve in that, that bigger why in my life?

I love that. That's great, Wendy. I picked up a lot from today. I loved the idea of— I had not thought about whether it's pickleball, hunting, fishing, golf, spending time with family, working out, going on a walk, whatever that is for you. You know, um, uh, Steve Jobs at Apple, um, you know, he was famous for whenever you would meet— he would meet people, he would go walk you know, around at Apple. And I think to myself, he was grounding. That's what he was doing. He was, he was grounding in that. And I think that that was helpful for me. And also, I was really kind of curious to see your thoughts on the intuition matched with thinking deeply about something and the data behind it. I even just this morning, based on something we had in the business, we did an event yesterday. And coming off the back of that event, it's kind of an opportunity, and it kind of led into this morning. And I, I was thinking to myself, I've got— I'm going to put it on my calendar to do some thinking time about this thing. And then there's also like the data approach, and then there's also this gut intuition approach too. And so I think that you did a nice job of the blending of the two of those. It's not just data. And my goodness gracious, with data and AI, we get so much of that, and so many companies seemingly are making all of their decisions based on data. And what they're doing is they're stripping the humanity out of so many of the relationships that are happening. I even— I hate to— I guess it's just top of mind, the Starbucks, um, on the Acquired podcast with Howard Schultz. Like, he referred to the Starbucks app as their Achilles heel. He said it's great and it's brought so much economic prosperity to the company, and yet it could be the downfall because it's removing what made Starbucks uniquely Starbucks. And I know that that's not intuition, but there is this feeling he has of like, yeah, but I mean, it's great, but it's also been an issue, right? It's kind of changed the relationship that consumers, customers have to the product. And so I found that interesting and how Um, I connected that with what you shared today. So Wendy, thanks for an enlightening conversation.

Thank you so much, Bradley. Thank you.

Shout out to our podcast sponsors, Autopilot Recruiting, Coach P Consulting, Club Capital, and Today App. We've worked with some of the very best vendors to be able to help you grow your small business. We want to help get a team of A-players on your bench and help you to be able to go to the next level going into 2025. Contact Autopilot Recruiting. Once those team members come on board, you got to develop them and develop yourself. Coach P can help you. Go to coachpconsulting.com. If you want to be able to make better decisions, even data-driven decisions with your financials, as we discussed with Wendy today, Hub Capital can help you to be able to do that. They can help pull the back office, be able to help you to manage the top line, grow your bottom line, and just take home more. Personally, go to club.capital and book a no-obligation demo. I love tech. There's no better tech out there than Today App Pro that can help bring your bonus compensation plans in an all-in-one platform that's great for you and for your team members to use. Go to todayapppro.com. Todayapppro.com. All right everyone, this was great. Till next episode, lead well.