The Exit Engine Podcast Episode 58: The Intuitive Leader

Welcome to the Exit Engine Podcast, episode 58. You know, I really see what you do as important in 2 different ways to our audience, right? And this is the founder audience, people who own companies, who who believe that they might want to sell them one day and are here and listening to this podcast in order to figure out how to increase their value and salability, right, over time. And I think that what Maurice does, John, is really interesting because there's 2 ways in which I think Maurice touches this audience in a really, really positive way. The first is that he has got this notion of intuitive leadership.

Okay.

And again, he'll explain what that means. But the idea here is that Um, you know, one, one of the things he does is work with founders as they exit, right, on their exit mindset and developing themselves for preparing themselves for what it's gonna be like to no longer be the person they were. Okay. Right. So like, which we talk about kind of ostensibly—

Super, super important point. Yeah.

Right. And that's, so that's a huge piece that we'll talk about today, which I, I'm excited about because that's, That is like our first— it's also a major part of, and the very first thing that we teach in our framework on the ExitEngine platform. So we'll talk about that a little bit more too.

Interesting.

Exciting.

But the other thing, Maurice, is that what you bring to the table here is, again, is this leadership training, okay? This ability to be able to get founders and their staff and everything else to be able to think and to think in a way and use their intuition more to make decisions and to lead that way, right? Which is a really fascinating, to me at least, very fascinating kind of position to take on leadership in particular, and especially in the world that we're living in right now, which seems to be walking away in so many cases from our own humanity. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

And the idea that what we can, what we should be doing here in terms of developing leaders and developing ourselves, right, is to start to rely a little bit more on our kind of innate, natural ability to, to, you know, to be able to align ourselves with— and again, we're not going to get too hoopy here, but the, you know, energetically, the ability to rely on your intuition more than thinking critically, so critically about every single thing that it actually becomes sometimes hard to move. Right.

Yeah. Which, right, which, by the way, founders already do.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So Maurice, what, what is the— what is that? Talk about what intuitive leadership is, right, and why it is such a big deal, uh, and why, why did you get into this particular space?

Yeah, well, thank you, and thank you both for having me. It's really, really interesting, uh, to hear you talk about founders and the plan to exit, that is so spot on. I can start by saying the definition of intuition that I use with my clients is the working definition. It's a sense of inner knowing, and it's not related to the source of intuition. So some have a very particular view of what intuition is, as in it's experience only, or it's divine entity, or it's mirror neurons, or it's reading the room, or tacit knowledge, or subconscious, it doesn't matter. At some point, you have to make sense of what your intuition is telling you. And that's where I pick it up. And I help people understand what their inner guidance, their inner radar is telling them. And the founders that your clients or your audience has already done that. Otherwise, they would not have started the company in the first place.

Right.

So, and everybody has intuition anyway. So it's not a matter of training people on their intuition. It's training people to have the trust that they can access it and that it is something they can listen to proactively, not reactively. Like, damn, I knew. Why didn't I act on it?

Oh boy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that was a sort of a long answer to your question, but I think it's good to know, to understand, like, what is intuition, where do we come from. And why I do this is because this has been pulling on me for, for, for, well, all my life basically. It's only in the, the recent years that I turned it into a business, but it has always been with me. So I've been running my own company since 8 years, and last 3 years sort of reinventing this into The Intuitive Leader.

And so when you talk about like intuition and how they focus that, I can imagine that there's, that there's some sort of, that with some leaders and with the people we deal with, it's like a sense of fear sometimes, right? They have like a little bit of trepidation, or they've started a company, to your point, they wouldn't have gotten here without some sort of intuition. But maybe they either can't take the next step, or how do you help them hone that intuition into something that can be positive for their business?

So we start with the end, and this is why I like so much what you guys are doing. I mean, the exit is probably the end for lots of people, but in a life, it's hopefully not the end, right? There's supposed to be Coming something after that.

Yeah, hopefully a new beginning, right?

A new beginning, exactly. And a beginning in purpose. Probably what you are seeing with your clients as well is that most of us start a company to earn money. We're good at something, we want to earn money, we start a company and we succeed in that to some level. But most of the people that I speak to are doing well but are missing something. They're missing purpose.

purpose.

And they don't say that to me. They don't say, I miss purpose in my life. The way they express it is like, something— I'm stuck. I don't really know what I want. Or, I am no longer satisfied with the people I'm hanging around with. Or, the usual trips or the usual mingle stuff in hotels are no longer satisfying. Or, my goals don't energize me anymore.

Yeah.

And they don't understand why. And that is really the entry point of a discussion and to purpose. And then I visualize together with them, okay, you have 3 steps in it. You have longing, your desire for something in life, often unclear. Then you have your purpose in life thrown into a business, which is really good. That's the part I really love. How can we turn longing into business, which is purposeful for everybody. And then there is a step in between that people either take for granted or simply don't take and get stuck in. And that is the intuitive process. It takes a creative process to come from longing to purpose. And once you have purpose clear in your life, just with a business, once you have the business goals and visions clarified, it's easy as a team to work towards those goals. So the clarity, it's the same on a personal level. If you know your purpose, this is what I'm here for. This is what I'm here for. It doesn't really matter anymore what if, if you exit now or 5 years later, or if it's a company, another company, but you, you know what you're heading for. And that's what I help them with. And from there we look back, okay, should we stay in this company? Should we exit? And yes, it's a hard fact that many don't dare to exit because there's this black hole waiting, right? No more title, no more founder title.

Well, yeah, that's what we do. I mean, we, we deal with like Burnout, right? So the symptoms that you describe, you know, of not getting the same benefit or, or not feeling the same good things, for lack of a better term, when you're at a conference or you're meeting with clients, we get a lot of people that describe that as burnout. Do you get the same sort of people? Or because the symptoms are the same thing, maybe the, the how they describe it is different.

And that's interesting, John. You're right about that. I do. Yeah, I don't— it's true. I'm having dialogues with people that are actually burned out or very close to burnout. And of course, there are real burnouts, and there's a real burnout versus bore-out.

Right, right, right.

That's a good distinction.

But you're right. I think for some, That is a crisis that burns them up. Yeah, could very well be so. Yeah.

Hey, I'm Jo Stapleton from the Exit Engine Podcast. Building a business is hard enough, right? Planning your exit shouldn't feel like another lonely, confusing project you have to figure out on your own. That's why we created Exit Engine. Exit Engine isn't just a software tool, it's an entire ecosystem. Designed to help founders engineer a successful exit. You'll get access to self-assessments, growth roadmaps, and a peer community where you can learn from other founders who've been in your shoes. You'll also find the guidance and expert resources you need to build a business that's actually worth buying and to do it without burning out. Imagine having the clarity to know what your business is worth, exactly where to focus to improve it, and the confidence to exit on your own terms, whether that's next year Or a decade from now. You don't have to do this alone. You don't have to build a business alone. Join us and let's build your exit strategy together. Visit myexitengine.com to get started. That's myexitengine.com.

That's interesting.

The, the, uh, what I find fascinating about all this too is that we have this, I want you to kind of focus on this a little bit. We have this— first of all, what do we really think is intuition, right? And in terms— and then how do you define it in terms of your work and that kind of thing? And what is that? What does that actually— what does that intuition actually mean? What is the— what are we feeling? What's the— right? I mean, is it a notion I have? We call it a gut feeling, right? I think I should be going this way. My gut is telling me that this is the situation, right? That's what our— this is what we mean by intuition?

Yes, and boil down to a sense of knowing then. We have this inner sense, it's called interoceptive work, and that is, it's real. There's a lot of science behind that. I'm sure you've heard of it as gut feeling, as the second brain, and then the infrastructure, the biological infrastructure to get from gut to our brains.

Sure.

But there's also psychological infrastructure that is very well depicted by Antonio Damasio, is his name. It's a neuroscientist, American-Portuguese neuroscientist. And he has— well, actually, thanks to his work, we now know that the signals that our system is picking up in our brains, the bits and bleeps of feelings that is called a feeling— I don't even know exactly how to describe it, but let's say it's a feeling. It's actually crucial to make a decision. Without that, without those feelings, those signals that we describe as feelings, that's non-rational signals, we don't have context. It's the feelings that paint the data points. That's what intuition gives you, a framework, a context in which you can take better decisions. And there is signs, a lot of signs that those signals are coming all the time. It's real, but it is not always the case that we humans notice them or would explain them. My customers explain this to me in very different ways.

Sure.

Some of them say, I don't feel anything. I just know.

Right.

And then, and then, and then, and I tell them, well, how, how do you know? Describe it to me. And then they say, well, I, I can't describe it. And at some point they say, well, I feel it. Yeah. But, okay. Okay, where do you feel it? And they can't, they have no way of pointing that somewhere. And I have a background with a psychological system called the Enneagram. It's not just the Enneagram, but within psychology, there are 3 main receptor centers in humans: mind, heart, and gut, and well, actually body as well. And these are 4 receptor centers that I work with. And if you take the biological map, our biological maps, where we have this, the biggest, the most condensed nervous system, it is head, heart, gut, and our body as a total, as an organ. And then we have the psychological map on top of that. It becomes very clear that these 4 receptor centers are our channels, if you like, to receive intuitive signals, because that That's what we have. And if a person is very much in tune with one of these, well, receptive centers, that is the dominant one. And if that dominant one is, let's say, body, and I have a lot of customers that are, I call them body types.

Okay.

They just know in their body. If I ask them to describe it, they will say, hmm, I don't feel it. I don't have a heart sensation. I don't feel it in my gut. I don't have any specific sensation in my head, but my body just tells me. That's literally what they tell me. My body tells me. And that's body intuition. That's often energized if it's a yes and shrinking if it's a no, and lack of energy if it's a no. A gut feeling, a gut yes is a very strong signal, a flare-up.

Yeah.

A gut no is when it shrinks in the stomach often. A heart sensation, a lifting sensation, or warm sensation is often a yes. And a colder or absence of signals is often a no. And the mind, people have described it to me as literally, quite literally, a sensation in the mind. And if it's a yes, and that is most likely followed by inspiration and creativity, it's also called creative intuition.

Well, it's so interesting, like, you know, and this may be sort of different than what you're talking about, but like, I feel stress in certain Parts of my body, right? So like, from my ears to my shoulders is where I feel a lot of stress.

OK.

You described the body sensation, right? Like when I have to make a stressful situation, stressful decision. Yeah, I think about it. I don't usually get something in my heart or my gut. I get it right in here where I need to make a decision. And it just sort of, it's literally, it feels like a rock or weighing on me. if I have to make a critical or big decision.

Yeah, and I know what you mean. My mom had a very interesting one as well on her right shoulder. She knew when it was going to rain before it actually happened because her right shoulder would ache. And then later on, we learned that people that have— I forgot the name now in English. What's it called?

Arthritis, maybe.

Exactly. Thank you. They are sensitive to the, the weather changes. However, my mom didn't have that.

Weird.

Yeah, it was her right shoulder. Yeah. So, but the problem here is, and this is where decoding intuition comes in, the problem is a little bit that all these sensations are real, but not all of them necessarily are intuitive. Got it. So that's why, uh, the 4 receptor centers are very good. We need them. But we need also the personal intuitive signature. So if I were to ask you, are you sure you love that person? Is there any doubt?

Not a doubt in the world.

Right.

No.

So I'm not looking for the feeling of love that's here. I'm looking for the feeling below, the certainty. When you told me like, yeah, there's no doubt. Are you with me there?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The feeling of certainty, in this case, it's so obvious. There's no doubt. This is the strongest feeling of the strongest confirmation of inner knowing. I'm not talking about knowledge, learned knowledge. I'm talking about an inner knowing.

Innate knowing that you love this person.

Yes, exactly. Or the opposite, that you would not love that person. It's a knowing, right?

Right. And it's a, and it's a confident knowing.

It's a confident knowing. Yeah.

Because that's the, that's that, right? There's what I love about what you're saying here. And again, it's, we, and it bears kind of going over again. But I think that the idea is that you're going to have, there are feelings, right? There are those, there are those receptor centers that we know are physical, you know, places in your head and body and the whole thing where these things happen. My John talked about his. My thing is that I have a solar plexus thing.

Yeah.

Right. So I get, I have, I will have, you know, I, I have, I, I have battled with anxiety in my life. Okay. So my, what I find is that my, my alarm system is centered inside my solar plexus.

Okay. Yep. Yep. Me too.

Makes sense. Right. So what happens is that I will sometimes when I am stressed out or nervous about something or unsure or whatever, that's where it rests. I got a feeling that sits there in my solar plexus. That said, it's not always correct or right, meaning that it is not always— it's an alarm, but it is not the decision. In other words, I learned to listen To this thing that's hap— because sometimes what happens is, I don't know if this happens to you guys, is in my solar plexus there, I will ha— I will just be sitting there and I will be having this feeling all of a sudden, and I don't know why.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

So it's not because I'm, oh, I have a bear, I see a bear in front of me and now I'm afraid. Right. And I'm, and, and that stuff, it is, it is a, if this is happening, an alarm is somehow going off. an alert, but I don't know why it is. And so I got to go investigate why this is happening.

Yes, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah.

So the point is, is that to say, okay, so it's the— what you're saying is it's not the alarm, it's the underlying kind of like knowing that then comes with what that alarm is. And sometimes that alarm— I'm using the word alarm, maybe that's not—

Yeah, yeah, that's— yeah, perfect.

Right. Is not exactly— is not, you know, is on the fritz.

Right? Yeah.

Like, I have a house, you know, that where the alarm— where the fire alarm goes off kind of on its own every, every once in a while for no reason. Right? There's a short somewhere or something happens and the fire alarm goes off. Now, we know there's not a fire. Right? And so it's alarming because it's a surprise and everything else, but we're able to then take that alarm and go, okay, and override that alarm with our conscious brains to say, yeah, there's no danger here. Right? But make sure you go get the alarm fixed, or whatever. Which then we don't do, which is why it happens again later.

Yeah.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is, like, I don't want to take— what I'm trying to lead toward here is, okay, so that's really what we're talking about, right? Like, there's this notion that can come up, the feelings can happen, the things can be out, but the knowing The certainty about what to do or whatever is a level below that and needs to kind of be, in some cases, probably investigated and learn how to allow that to kind of come to the surface.

Yeah, you're putting it very well because it's not always— I mean, in this case that we just had, if you're your loved ones, there is no doubt. There's a certain— the certainty feels rock solid. But if you have some decisions in life, business decisions, they can feel— they're not always that black and white. They can feel very 50/50, very close, often aligned with anxieties. And where I come from, I'm actually not from Sweden, I'm born in Holland. We have a saying, moving against your better knowing, basically meaning overruling your intuition. You know better, but you do it anyway.

Right.

And I have a lot of dialogues, a lot of dialogues with people that know they have to exit. They know, But they don't do it out of all sorts of fears. And then they have all sorts of labels to use it. Of course, I mean, our minds will create some reasonable thought patterns why we should not exit now. Of course, timing, value of the company, any sorts of investors, this bid wasn't high enough. But deep down, they know. It's the same in stocks, by the way. If you have a stock, do you dare to sell it now, or do they have to buy it now? I mean, it's the same decision in a sense. It's called temporal intuition. There's actually a word for it.

Right. You know that you should sell the stock that's down 30%.

But you don't want to.

But you don't want to, and you can't. You tell yourself you can't because you've lost money in it. So maybe you even convince yourself to buy more. Because it has to go up, right? It's gone down, therefore it has to go up in the future. So of course I'm going to buy more, and I'm certainly not going to sell and admit a loss and lose money, right?

Yeah, yeah. And, and you may be right, right? It may be the right choice. But if, if you're— if you're— if your intuition, if you're better knowing deep down says, hmm—

oh, it's happened to me so much. Sorry, it's happened to me so many times in that That exact instance. It's like, you, you know that this thing is a dog, and you know you should sell it, and you know that, you know, you're in, in, you know, the back of— like, again, the back of your neck, the hair in the back of your neck, or your mind tells you sell this thing, move along with your life, and then it just doesn't happen.

No, no. And, and if I, if I get a chance, if I honestly, if I get a chance, a genuine chance a chance to exchange ideas with a person on, okay, where are you now in your life? You're probably roughly 45, family and all that. You, I guess you have another 10, 15, maybe 20 years in you to, to, to really build something new. If you wanna, if the next gig in your life is purposeful, a purpose-driven company.

Yeah.

Uh, you can't start too late. I mean, if you, if you're older than 50, it starts getting heavier. So after 55, it's really heavy. So if you're going to build something new or if you want to do something for real, then you have to make a decision. But what they need is not just the confidence that this is the right decision to sell now, but also what's coming after. And that's where purpose comes in and vision. And they need time and space. They need time to, you know that. I mean, you're right in the middle of it in the operational stuff and it eats your energy. I get that. So we need to create space, time and space. And it can be a retreat where we physically remove them from wherever they are.

Yeah.

Or an online retreat. But anyway, What we just did, this simple exercise of getting into the— I call it the feeling under the feeling— is probably not even possible for most of these people because they are so stressed out. Yeah.

And let me ask you a question about, like, and I know, you know, you're contrasting, or at least in my mind we're contrasting, into, you know, the intuitive part of your body or the intuitive with like thinking. Is that, is that the right way to think? Because like, I think of a book of like Thinking Fast and Slow. I don't know if you're familiar with it. I don't know if, you know, I don't want to bring up something you're not familiar with, but, but like, I think of Thinking Fast and Slow and they think of like slow thinking of not the, the bear that Jo mentioned before. The bear's in front of me. I have to get away from the bear. I'm going to run away. But then it's that deep thinking and that slow thinking that comes in. So How does that contrast, or how do you deal with thinking versus intuition, and how do they go together or stand apart?

Yeah, I love that combination. You can't see it now because my logo isn't here, but I have— my logo is like, it's 2 halves. It's like a left brain and a right brain, blue and orange. So I like to combine it. So intuition itself is often described as non-rational and nonlinear and sometimes even non-local if it's connected to consciousness. But we analyzing it, I mean, the signals are sent to our brains. It's sort of like the laboratory to do some deep thinking there. Deep thinking and deep feeling, both. It's emotional intelligence and the intellect that need to have a look at it.

Okay.

So, oh, so that's what's that's that's actually what's happened, right? That's what I was actually describing before, but you're just you just made it actually make sense to me. So the idea is that look, I'm getting that feeling. The alarm's going off, right? There's something here. You know, it's like you we need your attention over here, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But what I have to do is I can't think my way out of that, right? I can't I can't rationally go. Hmm. Let me go through all the things that are here that might be—

No, exactly, Joe. You have to figure out what's causing— what's the underlying signal that's causing that alarm, right?

That's it. And so, and what I found, the way that I do that is through meditation.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, whatever works.

Allow me to help, like, bubble up my intuition outside of the, you know, that the alarm is kind of pointing. Does that make sense?

I go for a walk, right? So it's like funny. Jo goes for, Jo goes for meditate, does meditation daily. I try to go for a walk every day outside of the exercise that I do and just to get outside. And we've had some of our, I mean, I think we've had our great conversations on my walks. And then right after Jo gets out of his meditation, not that he's not wonderful all the time, but he's particularly wonderful after he finishes meditation. And I can tell when he doesn't do it, just to be clear. So that's another whole situation.

Because the stress overtakes it, right? And the worry and the thinking, whatever, as opposed to the knowing.

Yes. Yeah.

Interesting.

That's amazing. That's crazy. Wow.

Yeah, you can tell if you're working with each other if the other is stressed out or if he had a meditation or something.

Yeah.

The best ideas come always when you are Sort of physiologically in a different mindset, away from the problems.

And it used to be the shower. That was—

yeah, yep, the shower. Or, or like chopping wood, right? How many times have you been outside doing something? I had to restack all the wood in my house like about a week ago because it was next to the house and whatever, long story. But it was something outside where I wasn't thinking about work at all. It was the middle of the day, it was hot. And all of a sudden I had like these ideas. I'm like, oh gosh, I'm glad I have my phone with me. And I like did some video voice notes to myself that were like critical to stuff that I needed to do. But it came up when just the brain was not thinking about it.

Yeah. And by the way, the founders, your audience, I would assume that quite a couple of them are like marathon runners or something, or triathletes or extreme sporters. And you know why?

Yes.

They like the adrenaline, they like the rush, they like the— yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, but it's also their way of resetting the system and getting into a different mindset because afterwards they get all the good ideas, I guess.

You're right. I mean, I would say you're right. The majority— I wouldn't say that every business owner I know is like this, but I think that every entrepreneur, right, people who are like often gonna own more than one business in their lifetime and you know, have that bent are definitely people who know how to do what we just talked about, which was to remove yourself for a moment and get yourself in, get your brain into a place where it's not focused on, you know, on the— I think again, this is a fundamental understanding of how the human brain works too that I think is important for people to really know, right? Like, Yeah. I've always kind of learned, and it's taken me a while to learn this, but the thing that the brain is really good at is being literally being kind of like a alarm system, right? The brain's real, like, real— the human brain's main objective is to keep you alive.

Instinctive. Yeah. Right? Yeah.

In that instinctive way of keeping you right from doing things that are going to hurt yourself. And then we've extended that in our modern life. We've extended that past, oh, I'm worried about this, you know, wild animal chasing me. Right? To, I'm concerned about how, you know, what, how I'm gonna get made fun of on social media or whatever, right? Like, the, the fear that our bodies put in front of us as an alarm is just that. It's supposed to be an alarm. It's not supposed to be like the, the truth.

No, no. Yeah, it's true. It's true. And, and, um, I'm, maybe I'm getting a little bit nerdy here.

Please go. Okay.

You already did, so go for it.

So one of the reasons why I started to do the research on this a couple of years ago is that I wasn't really actually satisfied with how people describe intuition and mix it up with gut feel, gut instinct. The instinct and intuition got confused. Yeah. And I really don't want to force any kind of theory on other people, and I just want to share with you my view on it then. And that is on instinct. Instinct is really on body level. It's really what you just described as an immediate survival. And instinct has a tendency of moving us, moving the body. We are being moved or acted upon by instinct, and only afterwards we get aware of what we did. For example, knee-jerk reactions, jumping up, believing it's a snake and it's only a root.

Mm-hmm.

And it's really like limited to, well, immediate survival. And it doesn't care if it's right or wrong. Instinct is like this armor vehicle, this tank bulldozing its way through life. Better to be wrong 10 times and be right once than to be that prey for a lion and miss the lion and get eaten. So it's really not accurate. But it's highly powerful and it's developed early on in our system, so it helps us survive, but that's about it. This is what it does. Intuition informs us. Instinct acts us. Instinct doesn't reason with us. It doesn't ask us anything. It just acts. Intuition gives you that subtle feeling of, wait a minute, something is wrong here. You're in this room.

Right.

A person is behaving in a certain way. Yeah.

I heard it say— Maurice, sorry to cut you off, but I just think this is important. What you're bringing up is great. What I heard described was that I loved was, um, that, uh, your, uh, that intuition, right, is quiet.

Subtle.

Right. Subtle. It's not loud. It's not in your face. Right. Your gut, your, your, your fear, your anxieties, your— right. The things that, that the, the, the, the, as you just said, the, the instinct of like fear-based stuff, that's loud. That is in your face. That is get out of the way, you're gonna— right before you die, right? Like, so not only is it loud—

That's a good distinction. Yeah.

Yeah. But that way you can tell the difference between something that says— and I find this to be true— to be able to say, hey, look, something you fear that might be something that might be, you know, might be an alarm thing or whatever is going to be really loud and in your face. And that's where Most people actually act on those things, right? Whereas what you're saying is intuition is quiet and whispers to you, but so you can't hear it, right? If you are not in a place in which it can come through, because it will be blocked by the rest of the noise.

Yeah, yeah. If instinct gets in the way, let's take a meeting. I think, John, you asked me earlier, like, on intuitive leadership.

Yeah.

And if you're in a meeting as a founder, you probably have all the anxieties, you carry this responsibility. There is this team that depends on sales and, well, you as a founder has to basically pay them. And so instinct is always there. There's always this little bit of a fight and flight aspect in it. And that may kill the subtleness of intuition that comes through in a meeting. that helps you read the room in a positive way.

Right.

So instinct is probably aggressive. It can either piss people off or it can make people afraid, create psychological unsafety and lack of trust. Whereas intuition, if you do it right, helps you to read the room. It helps you noticing signals. And if you know that, if you are relaxed, If you had a good night of sleep, you are in a good mood, all of a sudden you're just more tolerant and you are more accepting of the signals other people are giving and more in tune and more willing to acknowledge them and to give them space. And that is intuition helping you read the room to create safety and trust for others.

Yeah. And building on that is You know, how do people use intuition in decision-making, right? So like, so, or what do you recommend people to use? And I don't want to contrast it with data because data and intuition are not opposites, right? So, so can you talk a little bit about how, how people can use data and intuition in their decision-making for founders?

Yeah, and I thank you, and I really love the way you said that intuition is not an opposite to data. It's not at all. I mean, there are those that believe that, I know that, but it's, it's that first of all, we as humans gather data in us and we call it tacit knowledge, right? It just doesn't, it just doesn't come out in us as numbers and bits and bleeps. It comes out as a feeling or as a knowing, but it's still stored data. Um, and then also—

And you mean, to be clear on that, you mean data that, that data is is experience. It's things you've picked up. It's things that your brain has learned over time and it becomes part of the filter, right? Through like, right? Through which all this potentially all information runs through and is bounced up against and whatever so that I'm— and that's my brain doing that, right? That's my—

Yeah!

Not intuition. That is like, I've made up limiting, you know, beliefs about things or An understanding of the way we think the world works or whatever, or the way that my partner is going to react to what I say is learned over time, right? And that is in there and sticks there and stays there as a dataset to be referred to later.

Yeah, and it is your inner knowing then that gives you a signal. And I can give you an example where—

Yeah, please.

But I mean, God knows how many times I've made this mistake. So when would I learn? It's like recruitment, right? I'm sure you are aware that there are some political correctness aspects to recruiting people.

Right.

So if I'm sitting in front of a person, I believe that you are not the right person. I don't believe in you, but it would be politically awfully incorrect for me to not say that this person would be good if the CV is correct. The CV is fine. The person says the right stuff. The CV looks good, but my alarm bells are screaming. Hmm, I don't believe it. I don't buy it. I don't feel it. I don't think it's gonna work, but have no logical arguments.

Yes.

And as, as a consult— I've been as a consultant for many years, but in sales and leadership. So as a consultant, it's very hard to go back to your, uh, to your, um, well, the, the, the person that has hired you to do the job to say, well, I have no arguments whatsoever. But you shouldn't hire this person, right?

Right. There's no concrete thing I can point to to say you shouldn't hire this person, but I don't think you should hire them. That's not— Yeah, right.

It can be, it can be really wrong, especially here in Sweden. Like, okay, so what is the argument then? Is it— tell me something. What are you going on?

Hey, I'm Jo Stapleton.

And I'm John Kniff.

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Don't let your life's work get discounted. Control your business destiny today. Start preparing now while you still have time to engineer the exit you want. Visit myexitengine.com to learn more. Well, I don't want to delve too much into cultural stuff, but I know a little bit about Dutch people and a little bit about the stereotypes about Dutch people, I should say. And now, in sort of your— you know, you're from Holland, but you live in Sweden. You know, is it different across cultures? Is your intuition or the way you carry yourself different in Sweden than it would be In Holland, again, I don't want to prey on stereotypes, but yeah, yeah, it's fine.

And I can also just finish what I just said, and that is that of course I was not brave enough to speak my truth, right? I said, yeah, fine, go ahead, hire that person. And every time I have been in that situation, it was wrong.

Backfired.

It's only once recently where I spoke out. I had nothing to go on, but I said it anyway. I said it as polite and as as, um, as— because this is Sweden then— as polite and as humble and as, um, well, humble as possible and politically correct.

Honest, right? You were being honest.

You were.

You were.

I don't believe this is the right person. I said what I could. If this would have been my company, my money on the line, I would not hire this person. I would wait. I would find another one that would be better. They didn't listen to me and it didn't work out. And I'm not saying that I'm Mr. Know-it-all. I just saying that if this feeling comes up, and it's not just me, it's basically every leader I have interviewed has been in this situation. I'm sure you guys as well. So this is the moment where your decision-making is really— your better knowing is telling you the truth.

Yes.

But there are probably other reasons, mental reasons, that would block you from actually saying your truth. And that is really annoying. And in Holland, it is actually more open. It's a high ceiling. It's easier to say this and speak your mind as it is in Sweden. The ceiling in Sweden is a lot lower.

Right.

I'm not politically engaged, but I'm open. I consider myself a pretty open-minded person, but the wokeness, whether it's left wokeness or right wokeness, I mean, all sorts of political I don't know how to call it, mental frameworks, as soon as there's an absolutism in it, it restrains.

Yeah, interesting.

And, you know, I had a very interesting discussion the other day with a person that is highly religious, and it just hit me that the more absolutistic people are, either political or religious or any other way, The more problem they have with intuition.

I was gonna say the less intuitive.

That's interesting. Yeah.

It hit me the other day. It's just, of course, that's why I, I have it. When I speak about these topics, the people that are— most people actually love it, but there are some that really react to it. And I realize now, I can finally see after years of working with this, I can finally see the pattern. There's an absolutist mindset. It's—

talk about— it's fists hitting each other, right? Or it's you hitting that ceiling or someone hitting that ceiling of my intuition is telling me something and my belief about something else is in conflict with it, right? Whatever that happens to be. And we're not, you know, politics or learned experience or whatever it happens to be. But that's not really surprising that if you have these strong, you know, absolutist beliefs, as you call it, it would conflict with what's happening inside, of course.

Yeah, because it's just like with this business owner. If you have been running your whole life with the mental framework, I have to succeed big, it has to be bigger than that number, and you hit a ceiling, it's difficult to grow beyond, let's say, 20 employees, but you don't accept that. Because your mind, your mental framework has been, my dad has built a company, my friends are super rich, I need to make it bigger.

Yeah.

And maybe, just maybe, your inner knowing is telling you, you should sell, either start over or do something else in your life. You don't have to be like everybody else.

Right. Well, yeah, we have a phrase in the United States, it's catching up with the Joneses or keeping up with the Joneses, right? Is the guy that you play golf with, or the guy that you are in, you know, the, the, the father that's on your— that you see on the soccer sidelines sold his business for X amount, and you feel you need to keep up with that, or keep up with what your father did, or your, your brother did, or whatever it happens to be.

Right.

It's that just, you know, whereas really what you should be doing is thinking what's best for you, listening to yourself. and saying, maybe this is the time to exit. Maybe I should plan that.

So I'm guilty as charged to that as well, by the way.

We all are. And look, the reality is the reason that John and I are even in this business right now is because of the, you know, of what we saw our, you know, in some part, you know, what we saw our families or our parents go through or whatever or do. You know, John's parents owned a candy store growing up that was in his house. You know, like he was around this stuff like all the time and the inner workings of a small business and a family thing and whatever and how you do it. And that's just obviously just one thing. I don't mean to tell John's story, but that's, um, you know, in my case, it's just, again, I had a, I had a father who, who, who, you know, was very successful, who I emulated in the whole thing. I'm actually down, I'm actually visiting them right now. We had a big conversation about this the other night. It was like, this is what we model. Right? We— our brains are, are learned this stuff. And to see that this is your learned experiences by watching what your parents did. And, and often when it comes to the exit situation, where we see this the most is in the, in the succession side of business.

Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because the parents, right, get to the, the owner of the company who's a father or whatever of 3, gets to a point where— and, and for 20 years or so he's been thinking that his kids are going to take over their business because that's what he wants.

Yeah.

He feels that legacy in that way to continue and to pass his business down that he's built successfully, whatever, to pass that on, the whole thing. He thinks that's a gift to his kids.

Yeah.

Only to find that his kids don't want— It's a burden.

It's not a gift. It's a burden, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. And that's what happened in my case. It's like the, the candy store was where I grew up. I don't want to live where I grew up, so I don't want to do this. It's very sort of— there was sort of very Black and white, and the same thing with my with my other siblings. Like they don't doesn't work.

So it's the same with my wife. She didn't want to take over her dad's company either. And I met my wife. She's Swedish. I'm Dutch, and we met in South Carolina in the U.S. in two showers.

That's funny.

That's really weird. I had not when you grew up in Holland, your focus is south to to to a warmer country. The focus is not upwards.

Right.

Yeah.

You go to Italy, go to Spain.

Exactly.

Holland to right Holland to to yeah to Sweden, right? It's the opposite.

I had planned to stay in the U.S. at least for a couple of years, and then it became a one ticket to to an Arctic country. You could compare it to northern Canada, sort of.

Right, right, right, right. Oh my God! What a yeah, what a change! Look at this way. But it is funny how that that's again. But so the point is is that. You know, back to the, you know, topic at hand, the reason that we're bringing up this, this is the way that people move through their lives, right? And, and often what they are doing is they're moving through it. They're trying to make the best decisions they can. We are, we have gone through a period in history right now in business, right? That was with this called the big data era, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. And big data was, this was the answer. Right. Yeah.

That was a good question. Yeah. Yeah.

It was like, no, we're gonna get this. And the more information we can get and whatever we can get. And what we found, I was the, the chief operations officer for a marketing analytics company for a while. And I can tell you that one of the biggest challenges that we had in terms of anything that had to do with data and, and looking at data and trying to get and analyze data and bring it out was the fact that was, it was very difficult to choose what to actually monitor, what was actually going to be meaningful and different, right? Right. And what was going to be actually be something that helped you move a needle.

Yeah. What's the signal versus the noise, right?

The signal versus the noise. And I think that's what, what you're saying in this, you know, in this intuition thing is what it boils down to. We can be flooded with data from all other things, right, aspects of things. And that doesn't actually help us necessarily make decisions.

No, yeah, yeah, you're right, you're right. I mean, who says it's the right data? Who says it's the quality data? You know, there's a very interesting—

No way of knowing.

That's the other thing, right? You don't know what you don't know. And so you're still in a situation where you, just because you have these numbers and you have these figures, doesn't actually necessarily give you any more, any more basis for decision-making. And in fact, what happens is it causes what we call, used to call, you know, analysis paralysis.

Yeah.

You get to a point where I'm like, I don't even know what we should be doing anymore. I've lost the plot.

Yeah. So I usually say that, especially here in Sweden, there's a lot of focus on data. The Swedes, it's an engineering country. People love data here. You may know there's a lot of IT, good IT companies from here, but it's also, it has really gone to the other side. It's like people say, I'm data steered. That's what they say. And I usually say, I hope you're data informed.

Right.

And one of my customers, he said it really well, like AI, who is now really perfectly suited to, positioned to do all this data crunching, AI is there to basically tell us what the what of stuff, like what decisions do we need to make and what is the data and the sources and all that. It's actually us humans and our own intuitive intelligence than to ask the question, is it actually a good idea? The why behind it? Is it actually a good idea to make those decisions in the first place? So why are we going to make any of those decisions? So it is sort of the, the AI will relieve us from a lot of these troubles, but without that steering mechanism that we have, that innate steering mechanism, we'll be sort of slavishly following data that nobody really knows anyway. If it's really right.

And you'll be making Right.

You'll be making decisions based on— you'll be making the wrong decisions because AI will tell you something and it's like, no, like, not intuitively you don't know that that's wrong, but it's like, wait a second, just because AI can do the lower-order things like crunching numbers and doing things, it doesn't relieve you of needing to do the analysis behind, should I make this decision, right? Here's the analysis. Here's the a way to analyze data, but then the higher-order function is like, wait, should I be doing this?

Yeah. And, and, you know, to— yes, John. And, and also to ChatGPT's, for example, credit, I had a very good discussion with ChatGPT the other day. So what I've done is, I'm not sure if it's, if it's actually, you know, the smart thing to do, but I've, I've fed, um, the beast with everything it should know about me. as a person.

Yeah.

My psychological profiles, whether this profile, that profile, my whole business, my history, the dialogues I've had with myself to get to where I am, psychological breakthroughs, but also the business views and everything. The whole thing about intuition, I've pumped it into that system and it actually allows me to have a pretty intelligent dialogue and it fills the gap sometimes. It mirrors stuff back to me that I hadn't seen about myself. actually pretty impressive.

That's so cool.

It's true.

Yeah, great idea too.

But there is a but, and that is that it's the level of awareness that the human, in this case me then, puts into this system that allows it to mirror back with quality. And that's the same data, right?

Your starting place has to be on a self-awareness to begin with. Right? Like, to the point at which, you know, I can feed AI all of these things. I have to give them all of the things. I have to make sure, right, that it really is, and I have to do it. So there's, there, in order to do that at all, you have to have a certain level of awareness to begin with, right? And so—

Yeah.

I was talking to somebody the other night who was like claiming that AI is being built for this exact, the inverse of exactly what we're talking about right now, which is to actually control people and make people kill themselves and all kinds of things is going on. It's like, and my answer was, all it's doing is feeding back. You're— it's giving you a feedback loop. So if you want it to be something where you— what you're trying to find a reason for you to, to, to hurt yourself or whatever, it will find one for you.

Right.

That's not— its best use is what you just said, which is to say, hey, I can take all this information that I have And I have to have some information to start with and give it there and then put it in and then allow it to analyze that and give me back stuff. And chances are it will give you back things that you didn't see.

Yeah, exactly. And then, you know, this typical AI response with the, you know, the 10 arrows and the 10 emojis and do this and do that. And then it's up to us to actually, yeah, make a judgment and a real judgment. And I think if we have it in that order, we are using our intuition. But you know the trouble, the difficulty is that I've seen, I mean, I've seen it with my son, he's 14 years old. I mean, he's glued to his mobile. He's a sportive guy, but otherwise he's glued to his mobile and everybody else is. I mean, take a bus or train, at least here in Sweden we do that. Everybody's sitting with his mobile. Nobody's actually reading a book anymore or just watching.

Very true.

So what happens is that we ask ChatGPT for— earlier it was Google, now it's ChatGPT— everything that pops up into our mind. We have a question, ask ChatGPT, it goes immediately. I've worked with people that ask ChatGPT something and they trust that answer more than they trust their own answer. And these are highly intelligent human beings. The difficulty or the danger, of course, you already feel it coming, is that we are not even— we are bypassing our intuition. We're not even We're not even trying to change it our way.

Giving up the— we're giving up the control, literally.

Yeah, right. And we're, yeah, we're delegating, right? You can certainly delegate some things to ChatGPT, but there's certain things, again, we talked about earlier, it's like you should not be delegating these decisions to ChatGPT, certain high-order decisions of your life.

Yeah. And then we start sort of numbing down our inner knowing instead of to train it up. by, by relying on it a little bit more. And, uh, you, there, there's some questions you just can't ask ChatGPT. I mean, there was this one very famous example. It reached Swedish news. I think it was an American guy that broke up with his wife because ChatGPT had told him to do so. Mm-hmm. I, I'm, I'm don't, I don't know who that person is, but that's the ultimate example.

Well, yeah, you don't wanna ask, you don't wanna ask ChatGPT about interpersonal problems.

Right?

Like to solve a person with a problem with another person.

Like if I had a cross, it's inner knowing.

That's what exactly. Yeah.

And that inner knowing is the same for us if we are running a business. If we should exit. And this is why I really like what you guys are doing because you are already preparing. I mean, you guys should be really at the at the start people that start a company. that already have it ingrained in their plan to exit.

Right.

Well, it's so funny because we say the same thing, right? It's these owners and these founders are gung-ho to get their SaaS product launched, open another restaurant, grow their business, which is wonderful and great. But like, to what end, right? To what end are they doing all these things, right? Because if you think about it, All the things that they're doing are to grow revenue, to grow profit, to make either more money or have more prominence or do whatever they want to do. But they're only going to realize that if they end up selling the business, right? In most cases, they're not going to be— they're not going to grow their business to be Mark Zuckerberg. So you're exactly right, Maurice, is we need to, and we're trying this, is to ingrain in these people that at the beginning of starting their companies, They really have to think about the exit because no one else is going to think about it for them. It's like, it's like the greatest business, the greatest advice I got in business school is have your own plan or else someone else will have a plan for you. And it's almost like have your own plan to exit or else someone else is going to have that plan for you, or you're not going to, you're never going to do it and never going to exit because you're just going to keep running on that hamster wheel all the time and not realize that To your point earlier, maybe you should sell at this point.

Yeah, unless that is— some people, I guess, will never want it because there is nothing else for them.

Right, that's the thing.

And the reality is, frankly, my advice would be that if there is nothing else, do not sell your business.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, yeah, no, it's a good point. If you don't have anything else you want to do and you enjoy keep doing this, Keep doing it. But if you get that again, you get that, that, that gut, that feeling in your body, the drive. Go ahead, say it again.

Say it. No, sorry. No, I was going to say that the drag, if you feel a drag, like it's, it's, it's a heavy, it's a burden. Yeah.

Well, heaviness, right? Like a weight. I mean, it's what we call an albatross, right? It's like, now coming to work is like a burden when it used to be joyful and it used to be something that was exciting and things like that. All right. And now you're in a situation where And we talked about this with, with our guest, uh, uh, uh, Sivenya a couple of weeks ago, John, right?

Yeah.

About the dark night of the soul, right? This— these 2 things are related, right? Because what happens is that when you are at this crossroads, right, when you're a business owner, and a very common situation is to feel like, I lost the plot, I forgot what I was doing here, why this doesn't give— bring me the joy or doesn't bring me the good feelings that I used to get or whatever when I was building this thing. And by the way, for some people, It can, it can happen very early on, right? Because some people, the building of the thing or the ideation alone is actually the most joy they get.

Yeah.

Right? Because then the next part is execution, right? And being able to—

Repetition.

And do the same thing over and over again, process-wise. All the things that we preach about that will make your business more valuable and sellable are often the things that, that for some people are the hardest things to do, right? Because they require the, the, the, the, the motivational joy and the dopamine hit and all that stuff. We haven't even talked about the chemicals that are obviously, you know, involved in this in your brain and stuff too.

But it's really— Yeah.

Dopamine and cortisol and the— and, and adrenaline and all those things, right? But, but the notion that we, you know, some— so many of these people are actually in a situation where it's like I lost the plot a long time ago, right? And I've been here just like doing this by rote. And the reality is that this can happen at any point during the journey, right? And sometimes it can happen more than once. And the ability to take that dark night of the soul, which we all kind of agreed on that when we were talking to Zavenya, that is a major kind of an alarm, a wake-up call.

call.

It is, it is your intuition potentially coming to the surface somehow and going just for a second, you know, and going, yo, yo, over here. Yeah. Back down again. It gets quiet again, right? Get rid of the noise. Let me ask you this. What is one thing that you think that you could tell our listeners right now that they could do right away that would help them kind of tune their intuition when it came to their leadership?

Yeah, there's so many ways that you could do it. It's related to awareness and consciousness, and there's so many ways to do that. You already mentioned meditation or walking or swimming or running a marathon. I personally have an— every morning before the day starts, I have my pen and paper. It's literally old-fashioned pen and paper. No screen and a big fat cup of coffee. And I get up really early. I've done that for so long now. I'm so used to it. That's when everything is calm. My system is clean. I can tune in. And I start with some mini exercises, writing. I do writing.

Yeah.

It's not a diary. It's not a story. It's just when I write, somehow it works. My right hand and my brain, something happens. And I ask questions to my system or life, whatever, and I get my intuition and I get answers. And that brings me in the right state of mind. And then slowly but gradually, when I've landed there, I start asking questions that are related to the day, like business questions, meetings, certain stuff that I need to think of. Things happened yesterday. What's important? What should I remember today? And that becomes a to-do list of— and it's basically strategizing the day. It starts with tuning in and it ends up with strategizing and it ends up with me opening my computer and then I start working immediately on the things that are most important. So that's, it's classical staying focused, staying strategic. And that is actually, I didn't mention it yet, but that is the biggest gain my clients tell me they get from decoding intuition.

Right.

The ability to stay strategic when it is really, really Murky and swampy and submerged in operational stuff.

So cool. That's good. Great advice.

It's so many people tell you that obviously that morning thing and getting out there early and setting your, you know, whatever. And I think people have different kind of like maybe even reasons for that or whatever. But I think that, yeah, that being able to find that, that take that time, that quiet time. And I think this is so much about what I, you know, again, from a meditation standpoint, so much of what revolves around that is this notion of being able to actually sit purposefully in the quiet. So hard for human beings to do, right? Like, because of this, especially because of the anxiety and the, and the, you know, and the neurodivergence and all kinds of things that are out there, right?

Yeah.

Your ability to actually allow yourself to sit in, and for me, and I think for John and his walks and things like that, it's like, it's nature and sitting there and allowing the nature things to be happening around me. And me tuning into this, this kind of natural world that is not that that I am not naturally a part of. Like, I am a phone guy and my computer and and the TV and this you know admittedly right. So there's a lot of noise going through my head. My ability to be able to sit there and the whole thing is like becomes for me like a tuning. I be my I become a tuning fork. I like allow my get into that place so that I can then open up this. And that's what it feels like to me, really. It's like it opens up for me the ability to be able— and I don't even— I'm not even like— it's not even like necessarily always conscious, but I find myself afterwards, and I can see the difference between the way I am now, the way I used to be before we doing— I was doing this, because I can, I can look back and go, whoa, how did I have that idea on that phone call with that client? I don't even know where it came from. Yeah, yeah, you know, but it comes through because I've allowed it and I've, I've trained my brain to be able to open up to that stuff. So what you're saying is like, it's like tuning yourself, is tuning your intuition, right? Tuning your instrument of—

Look, looking inwards. Yeah, some one way or the other, checking in. Yeah, becoming aware of the, the knowing behind, underneath. It's like it's tuning in. Yeah. But I have another, if you want.

Yeah, please.

So really not to talk down anybody, but the vast majority, I know that from own experience, for myself a couple of years ago, I've been working in tech companies on managerial levels and I've been running around like an idiot. And I know from those days that most people, including then myself, are mentally, they're in a mental space. It's all rational, it's all logic, it's all mental.

Yeah.

We are up here, very high frequency, very far away from inner knowing. It's thought work. It may be right in certain moments, but very far away from the state of mind that you want to be if you want to stay strategic with your company over time. And One thing that penetrates, well, most, like 99% of intuitive signals don't penetrate. That's a starter. But one thing that can penetrate, and it takes time to notice it, and it takes a little bit of time off to see it. But if you have recurring thoughts, if you are a business owner, I've been running this for 20 years, say, and for the last 5, 6 years, there have been recurring thoughts. Mm-hmm. That are different, that don't comfort you, that are trying to put you out of your comfort zone, whatever that may be. I'm not saying that you should sell the company. It could be something else. But thoughts that keep coming back, keep pulling you out of your comfort zone. Not necessarily thoughts to scare you, but they will trigger some level of anxiety because it's out of your comfort zone and it's not going away. It's not going away. Alcohol doesn't help. Working more doesn't help. Marathons don't help. Changing wives doesn't help.

Changing wives and getting the sports car, right, doesn't help.

No, it keeps coming back. That's a very, very clear signal. It's probably a very weak signal in the daily onslaught of stressful signals. But if that's a weak signal but recurring, that's really, really worth looking into. And what we humans do, including myself, maybe it's like we hit the snooze button. Like we hit another 9 minutes of sleep and we can snooze our way through lives. And if we don't, if we, but if we do that, at some point we'll end up with what you said, the dark soul of the night. It'll happen. We'll crash until we listen.

Yeah.

And that's what, and the belief is that that's what, that is your intuition reaching out going, you gotta listen to me. You've got to listen to me, right? And it is so quiet most of the time. And because there's so much noise and things going through our heads and all that stuff, that it's very difficult for that stuff to break through. And what you're saying is, yeah, you could give yourself the time, the moment, take 15 minutes in the morning, right? And just try to sit there, like I said, with your cup of coffee. And instead of thinking specifically about the meetings you have to have today, or thinking about these problems, Allow yourself just to sit there. Just sit.

Ask questions.

Ask yourself questions about how do I feel? What are the things that I, you know, I mean, there are things that you can do to ask yourself these things in these, in these moments. And it doesn't take a lot of time. Like, it doesn't have to be, I mean, in the amount of time that you can, like, again, John, walk around the block, right?

Yeah.

You just allowing yourself to be in that state and whatever opens things up. that potentially can help you make, like you said, stay strategic. And I love the way you're saying that because that is absolutely the job of the founder. And as you move forward in that journey and you get closer to potential exit, it becomes even more important, right, to be the strategic guide and not the doer, not the executor.

So true. So true. Maurice, thank you so much for our conversation today. We really appreciated it.

Yeah, likewise.

Where can people, if they want to learn more about you and about what you're doing, where can they go on the web to find you?

Yeah, it's a very intuitive website. Well, actually, it's very, very hard to remember, but maybe that's why people may remember it. It's called intuitivileader.net. And the reason that it's great Yeah. And the reason it's called Net is that it's because it's a network. It's a community of people that are basically on your journey, somewhere on the journey, either as a founder or as an owner or investor or on the way out. And it's somewhere there.

Right.

And yeah, that would be the best way. And otherwise on LinkedIn, my name, Maurice Jenkens.

And it's, by the way, we'll put this in the show notes, but it's J-E-N-K-E-N-S, correct?

Yeah. It's spelled the Welsh way, I've understood, not the American way.

Yeah, there you go.

Exactly. Maurice Jenkins, again, thank you so much for being here. Guys, Maurice Jenkins is the founder and the host of the— the founder of the Intuitive Leader Community. And also, by the way, you've got a— Maurice, you've got a podcast, yes?

Yep, the Intuitive Leader Podcast. Yes.

And we can find that wherever you find podcasts, I assume?

Everywhere.

Exactly.

My name and Intuitive Leader Podcast is literally everywhere. Yep.

Very cool.

Maurice is a speaker and advisor who helps executives build psychological safety and cultures of trust, sharper communication, and read the room, right, to make better, faster decisions under uncertainty. It was really great to have you, Maurice, on this podcast. We learned a lot today. We have to do this again. There's, there's so much more to this that I think it deserves even, even a—

I agree.

at some point. So let's try to figure out how we do that. Guys, the lesson here, right, is that what we're seeing and what we're all feeling, kind of what we demonstrated today in our own stories here, and you will all have your own, you know, is to be able to figure out this notion, this difference, right, between intuition, right, and instinct. The difference between intuition and kind of like listening to data and thinking through these problems, like, right, the ability to be able to allow your inner self, your inner knowing, to be able to come forward and be able to stay— keep that which helps you stay strategic as a leader and not get sucked down into individual, you know, problems, things that will help you maybe take your focus, your eye off the ball, you know, as the leader and things like that. So Maurice Jenkins, again, thank you so much for being here. We'll do this again, you know, very soon. John, as always, Thank you for being my partner. Thank you for your intuition that has helped to grow this company and continues to do that. And I really appreciate your, your partnership. Thanks, Joe.

Oh, thank you for having me. It's really an honor. Thank you.

Thank you, Maurice. We'll talk to you very soon. Thanks, guys.

Bye.