Episode 027 - Intuition - A Conversation with Sunil Godse

As entrepreneurs, we know that we make a lot of decisions. When we look back on our journey, we may be thinking, you know what, these bad decisions that we made that may have caused financial hardship or directions that weren't as lucrative as we would have liked, we may say our gut should have told us differently or intuition was telling us to make a different decision. But why didn't we make that? How do we understand what those signals are? Today's episode is exactly about that. And my guest Sunil Godse is an expert in the topic of intuition. So I'm not going to hold off any longer in this introduction. We're going to get right into the episode. Welcome to this episode of the Content Amplification Podcast. Today I'm joined with Sunil Gonsi from Intuitionology. Sunil, thank you for joining me today.

Thank you very much for this opportunity. Appreciate it.

Now, Sunil, you have a really interesting story. Now, when I read through it, when you accepted our invite to be on the show, I was super excited to have you on here because I can relate to a lot of kind of what your messaging is. I can think back to my journey where I went against my intuition in a lot of decisions and I paid for it. So, tell our listeners a bit about who you are and what led you to where you are right now.

Absolutely. So obviously, my name is Sunil Gadhse. I'm founder and CEO of intuitionology.com or Intuitionology Incorporated. And what led me to get down, go down this road was really It came from my first book called Fail Fast, Succeed Faster. And the premise of that book was that after looking at a bunch of executives, and I myself have been an entrepreneur for many years and then turned into a management consultant for some time. After the premise of the book was if you learn from the lessons of others, then you really should be able to succeed faster. And the one question I kept getting when I used to speak on stages around the world on learning from failure was, "What's the one thing I can do to make my venture successful or my business successful?" And I thought, "Well, there's a whole reason why I have 400 pages in this book and 75 stories and close to 300 interviewees is there's not really that one thing." Until I went back to the audio recordings. And it was very uncanny that 80% to 90% of the entrepreneurs or business executives use some form of, "I should have known what it was. I didn't trust my gut." I, my intuition was telling me dot, dot, dot. And everybody, 80 to 90% of people were really around this theme. And it got me thinking, okay, why are these people thinking about it? Like, what is this thing called intuition that everybody's sort of ignoring that gets them into these failures? And when I look at, you know, kind of my life, when I trusted my intuition, I had this something. I remember when I was 5 years old, there was these video games that I wanted to buy and my dad said no. And I distinctly remember this voice telling me, "Go door to door to raise $200." And that's exactly what I did. I gave him $100 and $100 to my school for charity. But the times that I ignored it were just devastating for me. I remember drinking the East Indian Kool-Aid because I'm a South Asian East Indian male, first male. And there's really 4 doors that you can go into as a career. It's doctor, lawyer, engineer, or failure. And I picked door number 3. My dad was an engineer and I hated it. I was really meant to be an entrepreneur. And in year 2 of 3 in engineering, I got a chance to be a private investor with a Mexican restaurant chain. And I was making soon 5 times more in dividends than I was full-time as an engineer. And so, in year 3, I quit engineering, became a full-time entrepreneur. I lost my relationship with my dad, which was a necessary sacrifice, but I was loving what I was doing. I had a management consultant contract, huge dollars, but the contract terms were changing. Again, something was telling me to back away and I didn't. I was so emotionally involved that I spent every single penny going to Silicon Valley to service this contract and the company never paid me. And I came back with 25 cents in my bank account. And finally, I had a friend of mine reach out to me when I was in engineering doing some coaching. She was being stalked by someone and she says, Sunil, I really need to talk to you. I need some advice. And my intuition at the time was something was telling me to meet with her that afternoon. And for some dumb reason, I said, no, let's meet a couple of days later. And the very next day, this stalker walked up to her at a bus shelter and put a bullet through her forehead and killed her instantly. And so now I really need to figure out why, like why, what was this something? What was this intuition that I just couldn't figure out how to trust? And so I looked at it from an art and science perspective and I couldn't, I was wondering why can't I find a definition for this? And the art part was these somethings, these, the voices and these signals that were all different. And so I couldn't figure that out. And then when I looked at the science, lo and behold, there's tens of thousands of articles on it. It showed that intuition Intuition actually hits the amygdala, which is the primitive part of our brain. And that's why I couldn't find a definition because there is no language around it. It's the fight or flight, it's the feel. And then what we do individually is we put our own language around our signals, our own language about our definitions, which kind of made sense to me. And then it was showing that infants as young as 2 months old have been shown to have intuitive tendencies. It showed that intuition acted 7 to 10 seconds before we actually make a decision or take an action. That was back in 2013. A colleague tells me that there's neuroscience research coming out of the University of Toronto up in Canada that because the research methodology is better, that says as early as 23 seconds before we actually make a decision or take action. They measured entrepreneurs. They said an average of 7 seconds before they make a business decision and they measured heart rate and skin conductance as intuitive reactions. So, there's all this research that was going on. And what I also found out is that these signals that we all have, there are two types of inventories of them. There's positive and negative signals. So, the positive signals obviously tell you that you're making the right decision. And some of the common ones are there's a flow or it feels right or the dots connecting. And some of the really obtuse ones, I've interviewed now over 1,000 people for my podcast series. And a couple of them have seen omens or orbs. And some of the negative signals are things like the gut feeling or the hairs in the back of the neck standing up. And I had one, actually one gentleman who was talk— he didn't know what his signals were, but as soon as he started talking about the bad ventures he got into, he started grabbing his left earlobe and he just realized, "Oh my God, like that's an intuitive signal." And he now remembers that his left earlobe getting hot even before going into these ventures, which is sort of the signal that his intuition was saying, Uh-uh, you shouldn't be going to these ventures, he ends up going into them, either losing money, losing interest, or what have you. It was just a terrible, terrible time for him. And so, there's these positive and negative signals. And the other thing I found out after interviewing over 1,000 people is that it really comes down to like 3 different types of people that we talk about when it comes to intuition. There's those that absolutely get it and they live their life with intuition. And I had a Buddhist monk that lives his life with it. And there's an intuitive channeler that I had, she lives her life with intuition, knowing this, what the signals are. The second group of people are those that really don't really understand how it behaves. And sometimes they even live life talking about intuition, but they, or even manifestation or being in the present moment, but they don't actually live their life like that. And a great case study is a friend of mine, Hal Eisenberg. We actually met because he was in the mindset sort of space. I was in the intuition space. So there's sort of this good cross-pollination. And But he used to think about intuition. Yeah, you know, I trust my intuition. And that was kind of it. There's this overarching, you know, word, buzzword that goes out there. He actually heard me speak and he didn't realize that there's like all these signals that are positive and negative and there's 4 types of intuition and 4 different intuitive hurdles. And it really solidified and crystallized his kind of understanding conceptually of it. But again, he's not living it. And so, he got these signals one time when he developed a cough. And he ignored them. And he now looks back and says, "My intuition was saying, 'Go to the hospital.'" And he didn't. And he developed COVID-19. He had the COVID-19 virus. He actually wanted to die. That's how bad it got for him. But his intuition pulled him out at a life or death situation. It was clear as day. This voice was telling him he needed to speak. He needed to live a life on intuition. He now knew how to make decisions. And he gets out of the hospital 5 days later, he tells me the whole, I'm the first person he tells in detail the story and he's my very first podcast guest for my Intuitionology podcast series. And the third group of people, which is really interesting because this is where, this is a non-believer, someone who, he's an investment banker, he says, "Yeah, Sunil, this intuition thing," like back in 2013 when I was doing the research, a lot of the online, stuff that was coming out was meditation, spirituality, coming from the cosmos, voices from God. And for an investment banker who makes his decisions in his life and in every area of his life on spreadsheets and data, he's just saying, "I really don't get this." You know what? You're a friend of mine. I'll give you an interview for an hour. We'll talk about intuition for 5 minutes. And the rest of the 55 minutes, I haven't seen you in a while. Let's just catch up. So, I turned the cameras on. It's very clear that he's saying, yeah, you know, I wish I could shake the hands of the people who see these omens. And when you make decisions, I just don't think intuition comes into it. It just doesn't. And the thing is, I'm now starting to educate him on what intuition is. And he says, you know, everything's about, you know, learning and experience. And I said, well, John, one of the four types of intuition is called experiential intuition. And it actually looks at your past learning and experience, both formal and informal, and it informs you when you're about to make a decision. Ever since you're born, it puts all these experiences in the subconscious area of your brain. And so when you're ready to make a decision, it pulls the relevant experience that you need, good and bad, that you've been formal or informal, that's going to help you with that decision. It's already given to you in a split second. And in some cases, the intuition goes against the data. And he starts telling me about an incident where he had one of the biggest franchise things that he's ever had in his restaurant portfolio that they went against the data. He put a location at a 5.5 out of 10 when he would never do that. It would always be a 9 out of 10. But he walked into this area and this is where situational intuition comes in, which is the second of the four. He just felt that they needed to put a location there. Now, everything benchmark data said was screaming no. But he put it there and that became one of the most successful franchise locations called the Beer Market. And now, he's getting it. And then, at the very end of the hour, now he's talking about intuition. It's fully in his language. His body language is positive. And I said, "Okay. What's the one decision that you made that is so obtuse And that's called creative intuition. That's 3 of the 4 that people thought you were nuts. And he said, oh, listen, I wanted to trade away my career as an investment banker. This guy's probably making $3, $4 million a year, high-end restaurants, private jets, limousines to run a tiny bankrupt restaurant. And now this is where the 4th of the 4 intuitions called relational intuition comes in. Everybody who is in it for the money and the lifestyle and the extrinsic motivation were telling him, "You're crazy. What are you trying to give up?" The one person that truly knew him for what he wanted to do was his wife. And he goes to his wife and says, "You know what? This just feels right." There's his signals coming through. And she goes, "Absolutely, John. Go for it." He quits everything, rolls up his sleeve to go into this tiny bankrupt little restaurant. That restaurant ended up being Eastside Mario's location number 1. And over 20 years after he retired, before he retired, he grew that to over 1,000 locations under different brand names, $2 billion in revenues, all because of an intuitive moment. So, from a non-believer in 1 hour, he himself is describing all the signals, the 4 types of intuition. And so, and it's just really about his definition, his experiences, his intuition. It's all our own individual— it's an individual phenomenon that we all have. We just have to use it and get used to it. Take the time to figure out what are the positive signals, what are the negative signals, and keep educating ourselves on those because the next decision you make, there's a signal with it. And so, obviously, if you don't trust the signal or if you ignore it, then you're going to make the bad decision. And in some cases, some people think, that intuition leads them down the wrong path. And what I do is I listen to these stories, and there's 4 intuitive hurdles that squash your ability to listen to your signals. And that's typically when we don't trust ourselves, or we put our values in the hands of other people, or we trust society. I mean, this is what happened with my engineering career, or we trust other people which we— who we really shouldn't be listening to. And these 4 intuitive hurdles are ego, which is narcissism or following the herd, Fear is the big one. Fear of change, fear of the unknown, fear of failure, being too rational or being too emotional. And so, when you have one of those intuitive hurdles, those are the ones that come in the way of listening to intuition. And so, for those who think that intuition leads them down the wrong path, and when I listen to those stories very intimately, it's actually one of those 4 hurdles. And a great case study of this is Mark Mettri. He has the Humans 2.0 podcast, one of the top 100 on Apple iTunes. He was on my podcast show. And he developed social anxiety, started to lie in high school, and then almost took his life because of it. And so he started on my podcast saying sometimes intuition takes you down the wrong road and then starts detailing this experience. And I said, hold on, Mark, if I was to rewind the podcast series, the podcast interview that I just did with you, when you started to describe this incident, what you said is that I knew I shouldn't have lied, but, and then you recounted the story. When you said you knew you shouldn't have lied, but your intuition was already telling you you shouldn't have lied, but you fell prey to, in his case, ego, where he needed to fit in so much so that he lied, he lost his own self-identity, and it got so far down the path that he wanted to take his own life. And luckily he didn't because he's doing some amazing things with his Humans 2.0 podcast series. That's how intuition kind of works. And so what you have to do is you have to break through that fear. You have to break through and even though this is unfamiliar territory, you have to take that step because you know it's a positive intuitive signal even though you may not want to. And this is where you have to take action. A lot of people don't really do this. And a great case study of this is a fellow of mine that I interviewed, David Dame. He had cerebral palsy and is in a wheelchair all his life, wanted to go on the beach and just feel the sand in his toes and the water. Goes up to the edge of the beach and he falls flat on his face in the water. And he said, Sunil, I have two choices to make here. One is I can go back and sit in my wheelchair and for the rest of my life regret that I never was able to live my dream of walking in the ocean forever. Or I can face my fears. I can take the next step and I can take the next step because intuitively I know that's the right thing to do. And that's what he did. And he points, he kind of says that the water got to his neckline and that's when he looked back. And he never realized how far he came. He was so far in and that's what you gotta do. When you trust your intuition, you're in the present moment, you just keep walking forward. And the more you do that, the more confident you get because the signals are telling you, but you have to be in the present moment and live life with purpose. And then you trust yourself. And when you trust yourself, who cares what other people say? It's your journey. And that's when you need to filter those people around you, put yourself in the right environment. And you can do this today by just reflecting back on your good and the bad things that you can do, that you've done in the past. What were the signals? What did it feel like? Get that inventory and keep digging because you want to make sure you get all the signals. If you and I both have a voice, that's a signal. For you, it might be signal number 1. For me, it might be signal number 3. If it's signal number 3 for me, that means I've made 2 bad decisions because I've ignored 2 signals. That could be a stubbed toe or I could be headed for bankruptcy. I don't know what the veracity of those bad decisions are. I just know I didn't pay attention to them. And so, this is where this is always a work in progress. Intuition is always like a muscle. It always gets stronger the more good and bad experiences you have. But you got to live in the present moment. You got to listen to the signals because it's always right 100% of the time. And many of us fall prey to society or people we shouldn't be listening to and we waste time. And then, when we waste time, it's something called opportunity cost. It's twice the time. It's not just the bad decision that you made and the time you wasted there or the effort and in some cases, the money. It's also the cost of you not doing the right thing at the time. And so, that's 2 times the cost. And so, every time you make a bad decision, you're actually accelerating the time that you waste. And I don't think that's a great way to live life.

[Speaker:SHAUN WHYNATCHT] No, definitely not. And I mean, what you've said here is very relatable, very fascinating. And I know anybody who's listening who has been in their own business or entrepreneur journey for quite some time can look back and see some of those moments where, where if they listen to their intuition or their gut feeling, as, as they could say, would have led them down a different path and a path probably, um, you know, a little more lucrative earlier on. Now, one question that I wanted to ask you here, and you probably have come up against this, is why do we as humans tend to ignore our intuition even though we know later we should have followed it?

So there's a number of things that happen. One is, first of all, they don't recognize their intuitive signals or they just don't understand how intuition behaves. We all talk about this rough gut feeling and trust your intuitions, lots of stuff on social media about this, but we really don't understand what it is. And this is all the whole reason why I really need to dig deep to figure out what's the research, what's the art, what's the science? Let's interview some people. Let's interview a neurologist. What are they all saying? And so that I can get a real good concept of how does this thing work? It's like being in a car. That you don't really need to know what's under the hood. You just need to know how to start the car by pushing the button or in the old ways, turning the key. And in some cases, kind of understanding that, yeah, there is an engine and you have to fill oil and once in a while you have to put gas in there. And so, that's where I started with that. The other thing is some people just absolutely need to hit rock bottom to appreciate intuition. And that's when they know that intuition was there. And intuition is always there. It's always shining a light. It's just that we're not looking up. And the last one is people sometimes they've experienced some type of trauma when they're young and when they're younger, they lose their sense of value or purpose and now, they're running blind in life. And this is where the intuitive hurdles are ready and waiting for them because their values aren't strong enough. And when their values, it really kind of gets your purpose in life and in business. And if those aren't fully formed or you don't take the time to really get back and figure out what they are, then you're running blind. You don't know where your sense of purpose is. And now, you're putting it in other people's hands or you're listening to other people and what they're doing and saying, "Yeah, maybe they're right." And more times, if they're not in your trusted circle that your intuition filters them through, you're going based on someone else's opinion. And they may have the right intention but it's not right for you. And so, that's where I find where people really fall off the wagon, so to speak. And it really comes back to, okay, what are your values in life? What's your purpose? What do you really want? And one of my interviewees was Vin Zhang. He went through this exercise. This guy, he talks to 100,000 people a year, 80 stages. This guy's helping people with communication, former magician, super popular worldwide, living the extrinsic lifestyle 100%. And he felt like crap inside. Goes to New Zealand, does this exercise where he goes to figure out what his values are. Puts all these sticky notes on the wall and he just looks at them saying, "Well, I just wrote what I thought were the values, but this is what my wife wants. This is what my son wants. This is what my parents want. This is what society wants. This is what my friends want." He's looking at the wall and says, "Where's Vin? None of these things have what I want." And so, he scraps that, gets down to what his values are and his purpose. And the poor guy, going from concept doesn't put that into reality. He goes back to the extrinsic motivation, wastes the next 6 months of his life doing the same thing until he had to go through the exercise again. And when I was on the interview with him, what I told him is like, well, Vin, and this is this whole thing with opportunity cost. It's not just the 6 months that you lost not doing what you thought you were supposed to do in New Zealand. It's the 6 months that you could have gained And then, if he's in the business of helping 100,000 people a year become better communicators, how many people in that year did he leave behind? And he just— it was just a moment of pause. He says, "I've never thought about it that way." And that's what happens when you don't listen to intuition. These are the cathartic moments that you think about and really taking the time to think about it. It's really, really important.

Absolutely. Now, as we, we get near the end of the, the interview here today, I want to talk a bit more about your Intuitionology project. Now, I know on your website you've got the 7-day challenge, and I want to give our listeners kind of an understanding of why you develop that challenge, not only from the point of what it can give the person who goes through it, but as a lead generation model in your business. I know on the website the Start Here button leads to it.. There's another page for it. And aside from that, the rest of the information is content, your podcast, your blogs, your experiences with testimonials. Talk to me about the 7-day challenge and why you chose that as a lead generation model.

So, the one thing is if you have just a book and you're talking on stage, that's great. You've got the science. You've got some nice pretty graphs with MRIs and brain scans. And it's really good if you're having a coffee and you're finding something interesting if that's what interests you. The thing with intuition is you have to experience it. This is your intuition. Your signals. And so, the 7-day challenge is really there to say, "Okay, listen. Don't just listen to me. I've got a book and this is Intuitionology. I'm the co-founder. This is about you. And so, you solve the problem. I'm going to show you how to use the components that are going to work for you." And once you get the appreciation for it and I actually measure your intuition using a set of questions, there's a percentage at the start and a percentage at the end. And with over 54,000 people now through this 7-day challenge, 100% of the time their intuition has gotten stronger in just 7 days. They also take an inventory of the positive signals and their negative signals. And so, in 7 days, I give them a template of how to make a decision from that very moment. So, if they want to have nothing to do with me at all, then they can take that template and every single decision they make is they can use that same template as long as they're diligent And they do it again and again and again. If they want to work further with me, I have a course that shows them how to use their intuition practically in their relationships, their career, and in their health. And that's a $99 course. And then, I've got a 5-day, it's an intuitive accelerator where I actually look at their values and I look at people and their purpose. And we go through in 5 days, figure what that is so that those 4 intuitive hurdles, don't even have a chance to crowd them because they're so strong and they've worked in what their purpose is and what their values are. And so, their intuition ends up becoming stronger. And I've had hundreds through the coaching program with lots of testimonials but they don't necessarily need to do that. And so, they can just start with a 7-day challenge. Here's a template and just keep trucking on with the decision-making.

Well, Sunil, you've given us a lot of value. You've given us a lot to think about and a lot to relate with. One last question just before we wrap up. We've been through 2020. We're in that pandemic. We're into 2021. What would you say to somebody who's listening, one thing that they can do to better their life moving forward?

Pay attention to the signals. Take the time to reflect and really sit and think about what those signals are like. Just get the inventories and start making your decisions on intuition today. It's already in you. You're born with it. It's already in you. It's a subconscious phenomenon. Why not use it when the whole reason, the whole goal of intuition is to help you live a life full of success in every area of your life? So do it.

It's simple.

Excellent.

Thank you very much. Your website is intuitionology.com. We'll put it in the show notes so everybody can go there to get a link directly to it, and that's where you can find 7-Day Challenge. Again, thank you so much for, for sharing this message with us today.

Thank you very much, Shaun. Thanks for listening to the Content Amplification Podcast.

If you have questions about how you can amplify your content strategy, go to AmplifyMyContent.com.