You Can’t Afford to Ignore Your Instincts. Here’s How Trusting Mine Saved Lives — and My Business

Last year, my neighborhood in Seattle was hit with a bomb cyclone. It’s exactly as bad as it sounds: 80 mph winds and 150 ft trees that can crush a house like a toothpick.

This particular night, the wind was wailing louder than I’ve ever heard it before or since. Whole branches were flying across the yard. Huge trees were swaying violently, bending farther than seemed possible. I remember looking into my neighbor’s yard and turning to my wife to say, “If I don’t get them out of their house, they’ll be dead by morning.”

I can’t tell you why I felt this so strongly. I just knew it in my gut.

Related: How to ‘Trust Your Gut’ With Confidence, According to an Expert on Intuition

The risks of ignoring your gut usually outweigh the price of following it

With that, I ran to my neighbor’s house. Going out in the dark was risky, but nothing compared to what I feared would happen if I didn’t.

I finally persuaded them to come over, insisting they bring the whole family, including their dog. They probably thought I was being ridiculous. But I was right to warn them.

That night, a falling pine split their house in half. It came down on top of their king-size bed, one of the branches even flattening the dog’s mattress.

After seeing the damage, my neighbor hugged me with tears in her eyes and thanked me for saving their lives. It was an emotional moment — one I’ve thought about many times since.

I travel a lot for work, and I’ve often wondered what if I hadn’t been home that night. But the far bigger “what if” was: What if I’d ignored my gut?

When your intuition is screaming at you to act, you’d better listen.

Related: How to Unlock the Full Power of Your Intuition

Instinct can save your business when strategy isn’t enough

Twenty-four days after I became CEO of PhoneBurner, the FCC issued a public notice instructing carriers to block traffic from one of our clients. We immediately removed that client and took every necessary step to mitigate the impact, but the notice’s broad language led carriers to block all PhoneBurner calls. Within hours, our entire platform was offline.

This was a crisis. Thousands of real estate, insurance, mortgage and other professionals relied on our power dialing platform to connect with their contacts daily. If we couldn’t connect their calls, we could go under in a matter of days.

So I started emailing and calling everyone I knew, trying to find someone who could trust me enough to give us a dial tone. I’d be lying if I told you there was some grand strategy at work. I was acting on instinct, doing whatever it took to keep us alive.

The notice was published on Tuesday. By Thursday night, I still had nothing. I hadn’t eaten or slept. I’d been calling everyone I knew, from Seattle to Singapore, looking for someone, anyone, who might be able to help.

Finally, my wife insisted I go out and get a pizza. She knew I needed to eat, but also that I’d lose my mind if I didn’t take a few minutes to get out of the house.

On the way over, I pulled into the parking lot of a nearby park. Needing a moment of solitude, I took out my phone and opened it to a bible verse that brings me comfort during troubling times:

“And we know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love him.” (Romans 8:28)

As I sat there, I suddenly had an overwhelming sense that I should go through every contact on my phone again to see if I’d somehow missed someone related to telephony who could help. My gut was screaming that I knew the right person. I just hadn’t found them yet.

Finally, I came across an industry contact in Miami I hadn’t spoken to in a long time. It was already 9 p.m. on the East Coast, but I texted and asked him to give me a call.

When he did, I explained the situation, and to my surprise, he knew someone in Santa Monica who might be able to help.

That person was in the middle of a fundraising event when they answered. But I put everything on the line to ask if they could get us a dial tone by morning. He said he’d have their co-founder call me back.

At 2 a.m., I received his call. His first words were that his attorneys were opposed due to the risk. But he said he’d been moved by my sincerity and tenacity, and that he was going to take the chance.

By 4:30 that morning, we had a dial tone again.

Related: How to Ask People for Favors, When You’re Uncomfortable Doing It

You can’t rely on instinct alone (but you can’t ignore it either)

Of course, things didn’t just go back to normal right away. To say the recovery was difficult would be putting it mildly. It was more like running a marathon after open-heart surgery. But thanks to my team’s dedication and the reputation we’d built with customers over more than a decade of service, we were able to take PhoneBurner from the edge of that cliff back to solid ground, more focused and united than ever.

I believe my little detour that night — guided by nothing more than intuition and a generous side of desperation — helped us survive so we could keep running. And once we were back on our feet, a careful strategy kept us moving in the right direction.

The moral of the story is this: You can’t run a business on instinct alone, but you also can’t afford to ignore it. Instinct isn’t magic. It’s experience, pattern recognition and wisdom showing up faster than your brain can explain it. Some of the best decisions you’ll ever make start that way — as feelings you can’t quite explain but know you should trust.

Related: Embracing the Unknown: Understanding Faith