Tapping into Your Entrepreneurial Intuition

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Welcome to The Business Animal podcast. Saddle up for a

gallop to the top of the animal industry, where you'll learn how

to tame your wild business beast with tips, techniques, and tools

that will take overwhelm to obedience school, and have you

wagging your tail with joy. And now your hosts, Kim Beer and

Cara Taylor Swift.

Hey there business animals. It's Kim with

Be More Business.

And it's Kara with Fast Horse photography.

Hello, Kim, how are you today? Doing

good. My intuition tells me that this

episode is gonna get very interesting for both of us.

Yeah, my gut feeling is telling me that I'm

probably going to be just hanging out, put my head on the

desk and taking a nap and occasionally going that's a

great idea, Kim or excellent. I love that because this is your

cup of tea 100%. And this is my awkward zone. So take it away,

Kim and I will listen and take notes. Okay,

well, hopefully you're gonna have some things to

add, because I bet you use your intuition as an entrepreneur

more than you think you do. And that's the topic for this

particular episode today is tapping into your

entrepreneurial intuition, which by the way, is the same as your

other kind of intuition, right, talking about focusing that

intuition in on growing your business or running your

business or making good business decisions. A lot of people ask,

you know, how did you get where you are? When in my world? Like,

how did you how did you create this particular environment that

you live in now? And my answer to that is always I just

followed my intuition, I just followed the feel of what felt

right and what felt good. And I got myself into some successful

situations. And if you know my backstory, and I've just done

some huge, deep personal Gestalt work around my backstory to look

at my life, you wouldn't think that I would have gotten to

where I am, my intuition has played a big part in my story,

and trusting it and learning how to be at peace with it has

definitely helped me build my business has helped me build a

nice personal life as well, it has created a lot of success for

me. And I think as entrepreneurs and as human beings, both there

are a lot of times we do not trust our intuition, or we fight

against our intuition. And what I want to do today in this

episode is I want to help you as the listener, and Cara, as my

business partner, to get more at ease with the intuition and be

able to tap into it when you need it to be able to make good

or tough decisions depending on the situation. So that's what

I'm talking about today. Now, for some of you intuition may be

a hard word for you to wrap your head around to say, Do I really

have intuition? Does intuition exist? What exactly is

intuition? And I can tell you what Kara said first is like

following your gut. That's what intuition is, at the most base

level. So that's like knowing in your body, what is up for you?

Or what feels right, or what kind of sets you off a little

bit into going is this the right thing? So Kara, want to ask you,

have you ever felt that in your business, like you're presented

with a choice in your business and you know, in your heart or

your gut somewhere in your body that you should or shouldn't do

something? Have there been any circumstances like that for you,

I definitely have gotten better over time at

following my gut feeling when it comes to my business. When it

comes to business decisions when it comes to deciding which

clients to work with or not work with. I have definitely found

myself in situations where I am mad at myself, because I didn't

follow that gut feeling. And I say to myself, dang it, I knew

that was going to happen, you know, why didn't I just listen

to what I was feeling in thinking? I've definitely been

in situations like that. I'm excited about this topic, even

though I act like I'm not but the truth is, is I think all of

us if we could get a little better at learning to trust our

intuition, learning to trust that feeling in our gut that it

would probably save us a lot of heartache in the end with that.

I feel like I have to give a little caveat around there are

times when like right you know, recently I've had a lot of

emotions and a lot of stressful things and kind of scary things

that have happened in my life and it's got me in a place where

my gut is perhaps a little overly sensitive. So I find

myself being wary of following it because I'm worried that my

intuition indicator is a little hyperstimulated. So I don't know

if you can speak to that at all, as you're going through this.

But you know, just keeping in mind that there are definitely

times when I wish I would have done a better job of following

what I was feeling and listening to that because you know, when

you don't things happen, and you're second guessing yourself,

and you get angry and, and you make sometimes really costly

business mistakes,

yeah, or you miss really good opportunities as

well, like you don't go for something because your intuition

is telling you to go for it. But you somehow have a limiting

belief that stops you from really pushing out there for it.

So I think the first thing I want to address is that our

entire world is a system, right? We all live within certain

systems, and your body is a system and it is related to the

system, that is your business, that is your life, that is your

home, that is your family, like everything is interconnected

with everything else. And intuition, to me is an energetic

connection with everything that is around you, and how all of

that fits in. So when you're saying that your intuition or

your gut is like hyperstimulated, because of the

things going on in your environment, that makes total

sense. And my way that I would address that is that if I have a

business, let's bring, we're gonna keep this honed into

business, okay, so if I have a business opportunity, and I'm

hyper stimulated by all of the things going on within the

system of my life, what I want to do is I want to sit down if

my alarm bells are going off, but my brain is going, Hey, I

think this has more to do with the stuff that's been going on

in our life than it does with this particular situation, then

I would want to really just sit down, get quiet, meditate on

that and let it turn around a little bit and ask myself the

serious questions of okay, if I can breathe into and just not

worry, and say, I'm going to I'm going to remove that worry that

I know is part of what's going on in my life from this

particular decision. And then ask again in my body where I

feel that so I think as business people, we tend to think

business is a very cerebral activity, right? It's in our

head, we have to think our way through business, but a lot of

us in the world. We're feelers, right? We feel our way through

life, that business, we don't feel like it's comfortable to

feel our way into it. Because it's a thinking thing, right?

Businesses logical

or appropriate or professional,

like, like your business should be based on logic, not your gut

feeling. That's where our brains go. Typically, I think, at least

for me, you know, like, I have to have that battle and say,

Yeah, but everything here is telling me this, but my gut is

telling me this, you have to balance that

you do and your body has a lot of things it

would like for your brain to know. But your brain, especially

when it comes to talking about business has a tendency to tamp

those things down. Because your body's saying, Well, you know, I

just have a queasy feeling about this business idea. You know,

and I don't know where that queasy feeling is coming from

your brain is like that queasy feeling is just silly. And you

just need to ignore it. And logically, this is the best

decision to make. And then you're like, oh, okay, what do I

do with that, and then you just ignore it. What my goal for this

episode is, is to give you a few ways that you can start

listening to what your intuition what your body, what your mind

what what all of the things around you are helping you to be

able to access when you need to make a decision or when an

opportunity comes up, I want to give you some tools that will

help you access those things easier, and hopefully make this

whole process a little simpler for you and a little bit more

trustworthy in being able to make good entrepreneurial

decisions. So the big three for this episode is, first of all,

to practice being at ease with your intuition. And the second

is don't let your inner critic muzzle your intuition that

happens a lot. And then the third is to create a system

where you check in with your intuition before you make a

decision. So those are all about building trust within yourself

so that you are able to listen to your gut. So the first one is

practice getting at ease with your intuition. And for this,

what we're gonna do is we're gonna start to build some trust

between our brain and our body. Right? Because again, we've been

taught that entrepreneurialism should be a very logical

activity. There should be very, very clear guidelines as to how

we proceed in our business. But I can tell you if you've been an

entrepreneur for more than a hot minute, you know sometimes logic

doesn't always work. Would you agree with that Kara? Like a

logical decision wasn't always the best.

Yeah, you up even if you feel like it's

supposed to be the right one, it's it's just it doesn't always

work out the way you think it's going to. There's just too many

other forces that work

there. Yes, absolutely. So the first thing

we want to do is we want to start building that trust and

ease with our intuition. And what this can look like is super

simple. It's like sitting down with your appointment book for

the day. And I if you have an appointment book for the day,

and just writing down who is going to be those appointments,

and then just checking in with your body or environment and

your energy and just opening yourself up and saying, Will

this appointment be easy or problematic? So don't get into a

preconceived notion like if you have a problem client, and you

see them on your book for that day, don't automatically assume

that call is going to be a problem. But look at your

appointment book and ask yourself, Is this going to be

easy? Or is there something that I should know about this or feel

into it about and check in with your body? Do you feel a

energetic hit somewhere in your physical being like in your

heart, or in your gut, or in your creativity in the seat of

your body or somewhere in your mind, so just allow yourself to

get in touch with that particular thought or feeling

around how that appointment is going to go today. And then what

I recommend is that in a very private notebook, not somewhere

public, that you just write down a little note about how you felt

about that particular meeting. And then at the end of the day,

go back and look and see how accurate your intuition really

was. So what you want to do here is you want to let go the places

that you were off, okay, so I know Kara tends to get a little

skeptical around this woowoo stuff that I bring out in the

world. And I can see her at the end of the day going well, I was

totally wrong about every one of those appointments. So intuition

must not make a jack difference in my day and going I'm not

going to do this again. It's silly or crazy. But the truth

is, is you want to reward yourself for the ONS and forget

the

offs or you could punish yourself for the

please don't do that.

No, what

are your intuition? If you punish

yourself? No, I'm just throwing that out there as like a tip.

Oh, no hurt like a rubber band on the wrist or no TV for you?

No, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

the test Oh,

you've got to be so bad idea. Bad idea. No, no

punishments are not, we're not training our intuition, we're

getting at ease with it.

I'm exercising mine, it's going for

a workout just going

for a workout. The goal here is to foster that

relationship. And if you beat on something, it helps, it doesn't

foster a very good relationship. But to foster that relationship

with your body and your mind and your soul if you believe in such

things, that it's right, and that you're paying attention and

that you're listening. So I teach something very similar and

creativity because to me, creativity and intuition are

very, very closely aligned. So when I'm helping people get

through creative blocks, I offer something very similar to this.

But it has to do more with specifically whatever it is

they're creating. But when you're working with intuition

and trying to get more in touch with yourself and intuition,

this is a very safe way to do it. Your appointments are very

safe, because you know what the hell's the worst thing that's

going to happen? Right, you're wrong. You're you're normally

really nice client is having a really bad day, and you let

yourself think that that was going to be a good call. And it

turned out to be not so good, or you got to a photo shoot. And

you saw it as intuitively as being really, really

problematic. And it happens to be super smooth, right? So

whatever you do in a day, kind of look at what it is in the

morning and just sort of let yourself be with it for a

second. You don't have to spend hours on this. Typically in the

morning when I sit and do this exercise with my calendar. It

takes me about two minutes. I mean, I write down the

appointments and my Moana planner, which I highly

recommend. So you can google monta planner to find out what

that is and I write down you know, who I'm going to be

meeting with and my to do's and I just check in with myself

really quickly as to whether that is there anything I need to

know or help head off with that? And I am right creepily often

with my intuition about how things are gonna go it's like

you're a witch or something. It is it is it's like there's a

magic psychic It's a magic. It's it goes back to the concepts

that your body it knows it has a wisdom that we oftentimes tramp

because we don't we don't believe it. Like it's it seems

really out there. And again, I know this is super woowoo but

yeah, so are you willing curate it? Sure. Try that for a few

days and see what comes up for you to look at your appointments

and just check in with your intuition. Sure she's nodding

her head, folks, so we're gonna hold her to it.

Absolutely.

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Okay, the second thing, and this is the hardest piece for

everyone is you need to not allow your inner critic to

muzzle your intuition. Can

I just say that I love number two, the way

that it's written because the visual don't let your inner

critic muzzle your intuition, the visual that it gives me is

so clear, and captivating. I love I love I love the just,

and I don't there's nothing wrong with your

inner critic. A lot of people feel like their inner critic,

they should they should muzzle their inner critic. And then

somehow intuition will step forward, I find that doesn't

work that well as easily as saying your inner critic serves

a lot of really good functions, right? So for me, my inner

critic keeps me from doing some really stupid stuff. That would

be embarrassing or not exactly productive. And the inner critic

is there to kind of whisper and tap me on the shoulder and say,

Hey, do you really want to do that or say that because that

might cause a problem out in the world, my inner critic used to

be much more mean and forceful, it would be the type of part of

self that would put those rubber bands around my wrist and snap

it if it made a bad decision. If I made a bad decision, like I

told you so or don't do that again. So I've definitely

learned to be more at peace with my inner critic and understand

its role in my parts of self and and how I show up in the world.

So that's a really important thing to recognize is that your

inner critic does have a purpose and trying to muzzle that inner

critic does not work. But what does happen is your inner critic

is loud. And oftentimes for most of us, it's what we've heard all

of our life, our school system sets us up for that our

parenting system in this country sets us up for that the culture

sets us up for that. And our inner critic is really, really

sharp, because that's our protection system, right? It's

the way that we don't put ourselves in harm's way, you

know, emotionally, and sometimes even physically and mentally. So

that inner critic is really, really important. But in the

process of that, that still little small voice inside of you

gets really quiet, because the inner critic is loud, or the

inner critic says, hey, you've led us astray, you've caused us

embarrassment or something like that. So I'm going to put a

muzzle on you and stick you in the corner. And I do think that

metaphor is appropriate. Well,

we've spent our entire lives honing our

inner critic, it's been something that our whole lives

has been shoved on us pushed on us, or that we have learned to

make stronger and stronger and stronger, just as a way to

protect ourselves, I think, from the world. So we've spent all

this time holding up and cultivating our inner critic,

whereas our intuition has gone to the wayside so much.

It has it has and that's the goal of this episode.

For me, for the world that's listening out there is to tell

you, your intuition does have important things to say. And

just like your inner critic, it's not always going to be

right. But it still deserves that opportunity to be heard.

And the way that I approached this is probably a little

woowoo. For a lot of people. I like to have a discussion with

both my inner critic and my intuition. And I just asked my

inner critic, can you be a little more gentle in how you

present yourself? And I asked my intuition. Hey, I'm really good

with you stepping forward and being louder, I will listen, I

know that seems a little strange and almost feels like I have

like all of these things living in my head, but which I kind of

do, but it works. You can do it privately. You don't need to

like publicly sit down in front of your family and have this

discussion with your inner critic in your intuition. But

you know, find a private place and just open yourself up to

talking to those two parts of yourself and you may have

different names for them. I know for me, my inner critic in my

parts of self work that I've done is called the approval

officer and that's that particular parts function.

That's what my inner critics name is and my intuition is

divine essence. So if your belief system or how you to

approach these things, feel free to name these, these two kind of

opposing parts of self as you feel appropriate, and then also

know that they can work together. So your intuition

sometimes is really on the side of your inner critic saying, I

see a major problem with this. And your inner critic is like,

yeah, so do I. And maybe you better slow that down, and then

your logical brain steps in and goes, but on a piece of paper,

this looks like a really good decision and everything against

everything in USA. No, it's not. So just have that discussion.

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And then the final of the big three for this

is to create a system where you check in with your intuition

before you make a decision. And sometimes to get your intuition

to step up and be a part of your life and your business. And

helping you make decisions is simply just checking in and

asking because a lot of times, we just bowled over our

intuition, because that's something we don't feel is

appropriate to even consider when making especially a

business decision. So romantically maybe we've got

this thing where I have this connection to this person, and

I'm attracted to them. And we can really check in our body for

that type of a relationship. But then when we go to work with a

business partner, or we go to make a business decision, we'll

be much more logical about it, we'll forget about that hit of

this is a good thing, or this is a bad thing. And we won't even

check in because we don't value that as much with business

relationships, as we do with that logical, we've got to think

about it point a point B, point C, point D, and we don't do it.

So we have to learn how to check in and just ask the question,

what do I feel about this? Where in my body? Am I connecting with

it? How do I think this is going to come out in the future? Do

you have anything to add to that? Kara?

I mean, not really just that I think that in

business, we just don't spend enough time using it. I'm just

sitting here thinking about times when you know, if I would

have listened to my intuition, things would have been maybe

things would have been different, I would have done

things differently. Or I'd be in a different place and or maybe

on you know, I don't know. And there are times when I know I do

listen to my intuition. So I think it's it's more about

finding a balance for me, and probably for others out there

where you start to trust your intuition more than you

necessarily you feel confident trusting your inner critic,

because you've been doing it your whole life. But do we trust

our intuition? I don't know. You know, we have to get ourselves

there. So it's an interesting, this is an interesting topic.

It is. And it's not something I don't say to

people, you know, if your gut tells you, it's the right thing

to do, or the wrong thing to do to completely trust that as in

100 person, I'm always going to make decisions from my gut, I

don't do that. I don't feel bad at all. If my intuition tells me

that something that looks like a good opportunity is not a good

opportunity. I do the research, I will pull on what small amount

of research points I have in my temperament type. Kara is the

researcher I'm gonna go with my gut kind of person and fly by

the seat of my pants sort of metaphors and cliches to go with

how I approach life in the world. But if something does

tell me like I see an opportunity in my business, and

my gut is like really queasy about it, I first have to check

in so here's another thing that happens to you, when you start

checking in with your intuition. A lot of times what feels like

fear is actually excitement. So fear and excitement in your body

sometimes feel very, very similar to one another. And

you've got to kind of learn how to sort out what's the

difference between I'm afraid of it and I'm excited for it and

there's there'll be a distinct difference as you get more in

touch with it. But when I see an opportunity come up and I feel

that particularly in my gut that's that's queasy, or

butterflies or something like that. I start by asking myself

is this fear or excitement and Am I excited for it? Or am I

afraid of it? And if I'm excited for it, why, if I'm afraid of

it, why, and then I look for cold, hard facts logically,

that's when I let my logical self step forward and say, Okay,

let's just use this as a scientific experiment, let's see

if we can prove there's something fearful with this, or

let's see if we can prove that there's something super exciting

about it, that maybe we want to explore or is going to cause too

much excitement. So I do temper that with saying, I'm going to

get in touch with my intuition, I'm going to listen. And then

I'm going to fact check that so I can see what's going on. And

then I take all of those things together, and I make the

decision from a really good place, the thing that I think a

lot of people do is they don't take that moment to check in

with their intuition and include that in the balance sheet of how

they're going to make that final decision. Does that make sense?

Well, yeah.

And it's just funny, because like you said

earlier, we use it in other places in our lives, you know,

we use it when we're talking about relationships a lot of

times, you know, which is, it's funny to me, because we'll use

it in certain parts of our life, and then we just don't trust it

at all in other parts of our life. So yeah, that's, that's

really interesting. And it doesn't it does make sense to

me.

Absolutely. Well, let's just review over those big

three. And I know this has been a nice short episode, but my

intuition tells me that the subject has gotten out to where

it needs to get. So first of all, practice being at ease with

your intuition. Start with simple small things that aren't

like going to cause a big deal. If your intuition is off, make

sure you let go in a nice way of the things where your intuition

where you felt off and definitely reward yourself for

the ones that you found that were on, don't let your inner

critic muzzle your intuition. Make peace with both of these

parts, and then create a system where you check in with yourself

before you make the decision. And then Lau your intuition to

have a say in the final final decision where it's weighed.

With all of those logical things that you're going to come up

with when you're weighing to make a good business decision.

Allow it to have a say in that may not be the final say. But

listening and paying attention is important.

You all we want to hear from you online. We

want to know what your thoughts are. Do you use your intuition

when you're making decisions about your animal, equine or pet

based business? Or do you tend to let your inner critic keep

that tap down? We want to hear your thoughts on this subject.

So come find us online. We are at The Business Animal on

Instagram and on Facebook. And you know what I've asked a

couple times as we record but I'm going to ask again, if

you've been listening and enjoying the show, it would

absolutely mean the world to us if you would leave a rating and

review and let other folks know that you've enjoyed the show.

Just take a couple minutes to do that. It would just be

incredible. Kim will be dancing in her seat over there. I'll be

doing jumping jacks just absolutely thrilled. So please

take a couple of minutes and do that. Thank you guys for

listening. It means the world to Kim and I to get to do this and

to share with you guys and we hope you're getting something

out of it.

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Business

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if you learn something today, leave us a review. To learn

more. Find us at the business animal.com We'd love to hear

from you. Until next time, keep your business well trained with