The Power of Intuition: How Women Founders Can Use Their Gut to Drive Success

Women in business and women founders have an advantage that can help them drive success: their intuition. Intuition is the ability to understand something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning. Women's intuition has long been celebrated for its ability to help them make the right decisions, even when the evidence isn't clear. 

I am passionate about women founders. Not only because I am a part of that group, but because I know how valuable women’s energy and intuition can be for the growth of a business. 

You’ve probably heard the saying “a woman's intuition” and, or “a mother’s intuition.” The truth that this saying holds can be seen in every aspect of life, but especially in business. 

When I started my business, I had this philosophy that it had to look a certain way. It had to be hard, it had to be grueling, and it had to be all-consuming to be successful. Luckily, that mentality didn’t last long. I started to witness all these other women doing business from a different paradigm– not working 9-5 but working 11-4 and a little on the weekends. Women around me were cultivating work schedules to accommodate their lifestyle, not cultivating a lifestyle to accommodate their work schedule. Imagine that! 

Seeing this firsthand from lived experience, allowed me to stop, reflect, and adjust how I show up in my day to day as well. 

I’d be lying if I said I never get back into that habitual pattern of head down and grind. That’s the way I and many others were “raised” in business. But I have made it a priority to be very intentional about adding some feminine energy to my business. I do this by surrounding myself with other women business leaders who are creating businesses differently, changing the paradigm, and trusting their intuition fully. 

Now that I’ve touched on intuition a bit, let’s explore the power of intuition and how women founders can use their gut to drive success in their businesses.

Listening to Your Intuition 
As women, we are often seen as more intuitive than men, giving us the opportunity to lead in different ways. Understanding how to use our intuition can help us become better business leaders and drive success in our ventures. Intuition can take many forms: from a gut feeling to a sudden flash of insight or a persistent internal voice. It’s easy to underestimate the power of intuition, especially when making decisions in business, but it can be an invaluable tool.

Startup founders, mothers, and businesswomen have unique insights they can draw on to get ahead in their fields. Podcasts are a great way to find out what successful women have learned and to develop your own intuition. Entrepreneurial thought leader Kimra Luna shares how she used her intuition to get out of debt and found success in her own business. Other notable female entrepreneurs such as Marie Forleo, Kathryn Minshew, and Rachel Hollis are also inspiring women with their stories about how their intuition has helped them succeed.

By tuning into our own inner voices and finding guidance from successful women who have followed their intuition, we can develop an understanding of how to use this powerful tool to our advantage.

Developing Your Intuition
Intuition is something that can be developed and honed, like any other skill. We can learn to cultivate and trust our intuition as a powerful ally to help us make decisions and move forward with our ventures.

The first step in developing your intuition is being aware of it. Pay attention to the small signs and feelings that appear in your body when you are making decisions. Do you get butterflies in your stomach when you make a big choice? Does something inside of you sense that the path ahead is right or wrong? Learn to recognize these feelings, and take note of them when they appear.

The next step is to start listening to your inner voice more often. Take time each day to quiet your mind and check in with yourself about what feels right for your business. Journaling and guided meditations can be great tools to help you get into this practice. Once you’ve established a regular routine of listening to your intuition, you will start to find that it speaks louder and clearer than ever before.

By taking the time to develop your intuition, you will start to feel more empowered as a businesswoman and leader. Trusting your gut will become second nature, allowing you to make decisions quickly and confidently.

Trusting Your Intuition
Learning to trust your intuition is a necessary step for any woman founder who wants to make decisions that are in their best interest. Certain obstacles can get in the way of trusting your intuition, such as overthinking, internal ‘shoulds’, bias, seeking approval, and negative self-talk. 

In order to break through these barriers, it’s important to become aware of them and examine how they impact our decision-making. This can help us make room for our intuition to shine through. By taking this self-aware approach, we can better recognize our values and make choices that are true to ourselves.

By trusting our intuition, we are more likely to make the right decisions, take calculated risks, and act where others would not. This courage can be a powerful tool in helping businesswomen succeed in their endeavors. Ultimately, learning to trust our intuition can help us make choices that will lead to a successful and fulfilling future. 

When I think about the women that I’m inspired by daily, I think about how time and time again they are continuously shifting to find a calendar, meeting schedule, and meeting cadence that’s best suited for them. By trusting their intuition and asking themselves:

Did that feel good?

Not what did I achieve?

Did my week feel good?

Do I want more clients like that?

How does that client feel? 

Then energy is around how this makes me feel versus what was the result of that action. The shift in perspective and the allowance to let yourself trust your intuition on what really feels good can be life-changing. 

Applying Your Intuition To Business
Having an understanding of the power of intuition and how to trust your gut instinct can be a valuable asset to any woman founder. Business decisions often need to be made quickly and accurately, and having the confidence to tap into our intuitive wisdom can be a major benefit in the decision-making process. By combining analytical problem-solving skills with our intuition, we can make well-rounded, informed decisions that will have a positive impact on the business.

When making decisions, it's essential for women founders to learn to listen to their intuition and rely on it as part of the decision-making process. This doesn't mean going against data or research, but rather looking at both sides of the equation and weighing them against each other to make the best decision. Intuition can provide us with helpful insights that our logical side might overlook.

Another way women founders can utilize their intuition is to get creative with problem-solving. Instead of trying to solve a problem by strictly looking at the facts and figures, they can also consider alternate solutions that may not immediately come to mind. Using intuition can open up new possibilities and allow us to explore different angles and angles we wouldn’t otherwise think of.

Finally, having an understanding of one’s intuition allows us to better understand ourselves, which is especially important for women founders who are juggling multiple tasks, roles, and responsibilities. Knowing oneself is key to managing energy levels, stress, and personal relationships, all of which have a direct impact on how we operate within our work environments. 

If you’re struggling to truly understand yourself, try implementing the practice of grace and space. Giving yourself space is critical for growth and personal development. Instead of worrying about the needs, interests, and opinions that others may have, space lets you focus on yourself.  Give yourself the grace to fill your own needs, and to take the time, energy, and resources to bring whatever it is you need into that moment.

Using intuition in business can provide a powerful tool for success, helping us make confident decisions that have a positive impact on our businesses. A women’s intuition is powerful and when we really trust it, develop it, and apply it to our business we can be even more successful. 

The women founders who inspire me every day and inspired me to write this blog are guided by intuition, they get things done, they have big results, and they are creating massive businesses. And they are doing all of it by listening to their intuition and being honest with themselves. My hope is that from this blog, you are also inspired to start living day-to-day guided by intuition, too!