The Gut Feel:

How intuition can lead you to success in

business

Murray Hunter

Contents:

Chapter One: Introduction

Chapter Two: Intuition and finding opportunities

Chapter Three: Intuition and the big picture

Chapter Four: Intuition and the start up

Chapter Five: Intuition and Marketing

Chapter Six: Intuition and Sales

Chapter Seven: Intuition and Growth

Chapter Eight: Intuition and Keeping (or getting) out of trouble

Chapter Nine: Intuition and Success

Chapter One

This chapter shows the importance of intuition in our daily life and how it is used to make most of our life

changing decisions. Various views about what intuition is; are shared with the reader. The myth that

intuition comes from some divine source is debunked. The concept of personal mastery is introduced

where the right attitude, awareness, and sensitivity is needed to develop unbiased intuition. The chapter

then looks at how businesses and organizations are really run. We see that organisational life is far from

rational, our goals continually change, and decisions are made intuitively.

Introduction

Over the last three decades management gurus have been telling us how to be successful in

business – have a bias for action, be close to the customer, get productivity through your

people, develop a learning community, stick close to the knitting, be hands on, be lean, or

become a six sigma black belt, etc. We have gone from strategic planning, to people, to

strategy, to quality, to entrepreneurial action, and landed in the blue ocean. The way we think

is common to all these methods but until recently has received little attention.

It was back in the early 1970s that one management scientist Henry Mintzberg questioned the

way we believed that managers thought, saying that most decisions made in the workplace are

intuitive and based on little deliberation because of time constraints. The reality is that we run

our businesses on intuition but ironically little is said about the subject, and there is yet little

assistance or guides to help us sharpen, focus and improve our intuition.

Away from the university lecture theatres in a time before it was necessary to have a degree to

be an executive (yes there was such a time), there were many self taught people who learned

through experience in what many would call “the school of hard knocks.” People did their jobs

on intuition. Our rush to higher education tended to influence us to shun the idea of intuition in

favour of “analysis” which we learnt, but actually had trouble implementing it at work. We still

relied on intuition, but wouldn’t really admit it in fear we would realise that a great part of our

education was irrelevant to the day to day demands of work.

I was lucky to work with a man who came up through the “school of hard knocks” and who

taught me how to run a business and undertake marketing on “gut feel.” Years later I was also

mentored by a Chinese scholar of ancient Chinese traditional thinking (yes Sun Tzu) and

couldn’t believe how much common sense it all made. Sun Tzu acted on intuition based upon a

whole lot of mental rules, which we call heuristics, relying on self awareness as his intelligence

tool. It was amazing how similar the two schools of thought were in their ways of thinking.

So thinking about it, only your gut feel, or your intuition is what makes you decide and move on

something. We don’t pluck daisies saying “she loves me, she loves me not”, we go by something

deep in our stomach (metaphorically of course), that gives us the confidence, the courage, the

motivation, and the energy to do it.

If you remember the 1967 film The Graduate, Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) after

graduating from college is seduced by an older woman Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), and

then falls in love with her daughter Elaine (played by Katherine Ross). After Benjamin tells

Elaine about the torrid affair with her mother, Elaine runs away to Berkeley, refusing to speak

to him. Benjamin decides that he must marry Elaine and follows her to Berkeley. The two

eventually become close again. However Mr. Robinson (Murray Hamilton) arrives at Berkeley

and tells Benjamin if he has anything to do with Elaine he will prosecute him to the full extent

of the law. Mr. Robinson takes Elaine away to marry Carl, another student at Berkeley. When

Benjamin finds out that Elaine is marrying Carl he rushes to the church in Pasadena and arrives

just after they are married. Thinking he is too late Benjamin bangs on the glass window at the

back of the church and shouts “Elaine.” Elaine turns around and sees Benjamin, hesitates for a

second looking at her parents and new husband Carl and then shouts “Ben” and runs towards

him. After a scuffle the pair run down the road and flag down a bus and travel onto their new

life. This is a perfect example of intuition over reason. All important life decisions are made

through intuition.

This book will share with you some of my thoughts on intuition and show you how to harness

intuition through some simple tools so that you can make the right decisions that steer you

venture to success.

So what is Intuition?

First of all what does intuition do? Intuition gives us a gut feeling about something, a quick

insight into issues and problems, an instinctive sense, an inner knowing, a hunch, or wisdom

about something. In psychology, intuition is described as thoughts and feelings that come to

our mind without much reflection. Intuition surfaces our beliefs about something which we

cannot easily justify through reasoning. Some describe intuition as a function coming from a

holistic right side of the brain, although recent research has shown that intuition may be much

more than that. Jungian psychology aligned intuition as a part of our personality type. The

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) tabulates different personality types where intuitive people

tend to make decisions upon their perceptions. More recently intuition has become an

important aspect of the creativity and innovation movement as a method or ability to solve

problems and make decisions. Cognitively, intuition is based upon little rules of the thumb that

originate from our deep beliefs that guide our decision making, called heuristics.

The reliability of our intuition depends upon our knowledge stored in our memory and

perceptions from the environment. Therefore the wider and deeper our knowledge, given that

there are no distorting forces present, the better might be our intuition. Those people who use

intuition as a means of decision making according to Jung would make good entrepreneurs,

where people must make decisions under uncertainty and little fact to reason on. Intuition is a

means of making decisions that can deal with little factual information and analysis.

Intuition is a blend of knowledge, some logical fact, some belief, experience, emotion, sub-

conscious memory, and stimuli perceived in the environment. Intuition is restrictive to what we

are good at and not a general trait. For example a mechanic will be able to very quickly

diagnose what is wrong with a car by just listening to it, where he may not be able to pick up

why a baby is crying in a daycare centre, which a daycare professional would be able to do

intuitively.

Is Intuition from any Divine Source?

Some authors, speakers, and spiritualists claim that intuition is a divine power with

transcendent qualities that spiritually guide you. Although it can be argued that intuition is

higher order thinking, it is certainly not of any divine origin coming from some spiritual source

outside our existing knowledge. To believe that intuition is from some power of a higher order

is very risky as this logic may convince people to follow their intuition when it may actually be

coming from a person’s ego, or false intuition. The power of intuition is not divine, but the

power of wisdom that emerges from personal mastery is something that can set people apart

from others.

What is Personal Mastery?

Personal mastery is a term the author and management guru Peter Senge borrowed from the

Buddhist Dharma meaning that you are practicing the kaizen or continuous improvement of

everything you do in all areas of your life. Personal mastery is about a journey in life that brings

among other things personal growth, learning, and wisdom. At this level you are able to see

things for what they are unchecked by your emotional baggage and biases. In such a state

intuition is completely unbiased and trustworthy and can assist you in your journey from your

current reality to your personal visions in life. As such personal mastery also generates the

energy you need to pursue your vision.

According to Peter Senge, people with personal mastery have;

• A special purpose or calling in life,

• Can see their currently reality very clearly,

• Can recognize their own biases,

• See change as an opportunity, and

• Are deeply inquisitive.

These qualities show that three elements are important in gaining unbiased intuition, the right

attitude of openness to what might really be, an unbiased awareness, and greater sensitivity.

Attitude is very important to learning and our personal growth. This influences how we develop

our mental models (i.e., built in assumptions about how the world around us works), which

creates our meaning. This means not taking things for granted and wanting to see things in

different perspectives, which will be discussed later. Sounds easy, but in reality we are usually

locked in and become a slave to our attitudes. Think about it, we are naturally creatures of

habit and like to maintain rigid routines that act as a protective screen against change. We

naturally resist change as it brings uncertainty and uncertainty brings anxiety, which we try to

avoid.

Attitude affects our sense of awareness. Some people are orientated towards the future and

others to the past. When we become orientated to the future we can develop apprehensions

and worry about what will happen bringing a sense of anxiety, thus becoming fearful about

change. If we dwell on the past we can become remorseful and set in the patterns and ways of

doing things, thus becoming rigid and fear change (an entrepreneur is someone who embraces

change, orientated in the past will prevent any action orientation of a person). Being orientated

in the future or past makes us rather insensitive to here and now, where we are at present. This

is not to say that some future orientation is good to have visions about what could be, and at

the same time to have some orientation on the past so we can learn in the present and find

opportunities that improve the future.

Likewise our awareness is also affected by our locus of control (the belief about how much we

have control over events around us). If we believe that we have no control over events going on

around us, we won’t care and we will be oblivious to opportunities around us. If we believe that

we can control everything, then we may become delusional about what we can achieve and

develop an extreme sense of over confidence.

This quad-directional frame is surrounded by our emotions which can distort our awareness.

Emotions such as envy, greed, lust, anger, depression, and persecution distract us from seeing

the environment clearly and affect our interpretation of what exists. In mild forms a little bit of

ruthlessness might be necessary to survive out there in the world, but too much greed for

example may influence a person to undertake strategies that are too ambitious, and put a

company into cash-flow problems.

Being balanced within the awareness plain is very important to having an unbiased intuition

(shown in figure 1.1.).

Figure 1.1. The Awareness Plain.

We also need to have emotional sensitivity so we can pick up what is happening around us.

Emotional sensitivity runs across a continuum from mindlessness to mindfulness.

Mindlessness numbs individuals’ senses to the outside environment and patterns them into

seeing situations as absolutes. Whereas mindfulness is a state of psychological freedom without

any attachment to any point of view and being attentive to what is occurring at present. Many

peoples’ emotional sensitivity is inhibited by their past categorizations, rules and routines that

Future Orientation

Past Orientation

Str

on

g L

ocu

s o

f C

on

tro

l We

ak

Locu

s of C

on

trol

Optimum Region

of Awareness

Emotional

Disturbances

cloud the ability to view any current situation with novel distinction. Therefore the more

mindful a person is, the more open to the environment they will be.

Figure 1.2. Our emotional sensitivity.

How Business is Really Run

One of the great myths of the 20th

Century was that firms and organizations were run rationally.

Anybody who has seen some of the British “Carry on” series, “Monty Python”, or “Yes Minister”

and worked in any large organization will laugh at the idea that organizations are anything

resembling rational. Organizational life is probably something more akin to the episodes of

“Absolutely Fabulous.” Although we believe we are rational beings, we actually go about things

in the most inconsistent ways. We probably still have a lot to learn from the ant species that we

share the Earth with.

This is especially the case in entrepreneurs and new venture formation (or new marriages for

that matter). We try things in an exploratory way to see how they work. If they work, we keep

doing it, and that becomes our behavior. Those parents reading will know that this is how

children learn. So the journey of business and life is more akin to sailing a yacht along a bay

against the wind tacking every few hundred metres to reach some upwind point, at some

optimum angle against the wind. Although we may set certain goals at the beginning of the

journey, most probably during that journey we modify them and end up at a new destination as

well. Firm rules don’t work, it’s more about seeing and feeling what happens and making

decisions accordingly. The journey of life is therefore guided by intuition, and the better we

understand it, the better it can work for us.

No Sensitivity High Sensitivity

Ability to see the environment in different ways

Figure 1.3. The journey of life is like sailing a yacht upwind.

The rest of this book will show you how to use intuition when all the facts are not available to

find opportunities, start-up and grow a business.

The next chapter will look at how intuition helps us find opportunities. You will see how not too

many people look into the future and outside their own set geographical areas. Most people

see opportunity through their own aspirations and often mistake their personal interests for

opportunity. Different types of opportunities have different types of characteristics and

intuition helps us to construct them into new business models. Finally we will see that curiosity

and interest are two very important ingredients in the ability to see opportunities.

Chapter three is about seeing the big picture of opportunities which can be intuitively tested

through checklists which help us to examine each element of the selected opportunity. As you

will see most entrepreneurs never start with any formal business plan, and even if they did,

they would undertake this intuitive due diligence.

Chapter four is about intuition and the start-up phase of a venture. Entrepreneurs are usually

strapped for resources and only have time to do what is immediately important to get the start-

up going. They have little information to go on, so they must use intuition to make the

necessary and important decisions. You will also see in this chapter that one must be very

careful not to mistake ego for their intuition which is a deadly trap for young players.

Chapter five concerns intuition and marketing. Entrepreneurial marketing is very different from

conventional marketing practices due to the lean resources an entrepreneur has. Start-up

ventures usually lack market information and must therefore rely on intuition to make

Vision &

Goals

Modified

Vision & Goals

Actual Path &

Performance

Wind in the case of a yacht or

environmental turbulence in the

case of a firm.

decisions. We will also see that what entrepreneurs envision for the market and what

consumers will accept may be very different and entrepreneurs must reconcile these

differences. Intuition on the run in the marketplace helps to reconcile entrepreneurial visions

with consumer realities. The chapter concludes with an outline of how a new firm can find its

place in the market by either attracting consumers away from existing products or creating new

value to consumers.

Chapter six is about intuition and the sales process. Sales are vital in the start-up phase of an

enterprise and most of the entrepreneur’s time will be concerned with this issue. The chapter

outlines the basic principles of sales, how to build up sales skills, and how to put up your case to

the potential customer. Empathy, a form of intuition is very important in the initial sales

process and for meeting later objections that potential customers may raise.

Chapter seven concerns intuition and growth. During the life of a firm there will be times when

big decisions may have to be made that alter the destiny of the enterprise. These potential

paths can be looked upon as potential moves that can be made in the game of chess, where any

move will have specific consequences.

Chapter eight is concerned with intuition and keeping (or getting) out of trouble. There are

usually a number of crises during the life of a firm where getting out of trouble is about

intuition as much it is about following management philosophy. There are multiple perspectives

about any situation that need to be appreciated before decisions should be made. Different

perspectives can be discovered and appreciated by the use of lists. This helps to support

intuition. Another problem with any crisis is the stress it brings the entrepreneur, which

potentially blocks unbiased intuition.

Finally, chapter nine summarizes the issues involved with intuition and business. The blocks to

and distortion of intuition are revisited as well as the relationship between intuition, creativity,

and action.

Summary

• In reality business decision making is done intuitively.

• Our life changing decisions are also made intuitively.

• Intuition can be defined as thoughts and feelings that come to our mind without any

reflection.

• Intuition is an important part of creativity.

• Intuition is the only way to make decisions where factual information doesn’t exist.

• Intuition is based upon our current knowledge, experience, beliefs, and from what we

see in the environment and has no divine sources.

• Personal mastery is a continual journey to self improvement, through learning, personal

growth, and the source of our wisdom.

• Attitude, awareness, and sensitivity are very important to get insightful and unbiased

intuition.

• It is important that we live in the present and not the past or the future.

• We must be realistic about our sense of control over events within the environment.

• We must be aware of emotions that can burden us with bias.

• Business and organizations are far from rational entities.

• Organizations rarely pursue their goals directly, as strategy and action is more about

trial and error, and the resulting learning.

Some More Introductory Tips:

• Thought Audit: Most people are not aware of what is contained within their thoughts

and what emotions influence them. We can discover the influences on our thoughts by

recording them down in a dairy. For example you have a thought about “being the

person to kick the winning goal in Saturday’s football match,” After your write down the

thought try and think what emotion and motivation is behind it. Back in this example

the thought of kicking the winning goal might be associated with “the need to achieve”

or “the need to seek attention and be noticed” – this could come from feeling inferior to

others, or just a need to be competitive. After a day or so of recording down your

thoughts and emotions, one may begin to see consistent patterns about the types of

emotions you feel and if any particular set of emotions dominate your thinking. You may

find that your emotions have multiple motivations. In the above example your thoughts

may show you that there is both a need to achieve and a need to be competitive. There

may even be some feeling of a need to make a difference. On the contrary, your

thoughts may show that you have a strong desire to be noticed. Being forced to think

about the types of emotions you feel may give you some insights into yourself that

surprise you and help you to build up unbiased intuition.

Chapter Two

This chapter looks at the characteristics of opportunity and the role intuition plays in finding and

developing them. Our personal aspirations influence the types of opportunities we see. There

are basically four types of opportunities; those that are imitative of other businesses, those that

rely on consumer markets and established supply chains, those that are entrepreneurially novel,

and those that come from some form of breakthrough technology. The concept of mindfulness is

introduced which helps us see opportunities at various depths or levels. Finally the chapter

shows how to construct an opportunity using the method called concept extraction.

Intuition and Finding Opportunities

The central aspect of opportunity is being able to see it in the first place and act upon it before

others. This relies upon how we see the world and process information. The resulting vision,

insight, discovery, or creation is an idea that upon evaluation may become an opportunity. This

ability is not evenly distributed among people as people have different orientations towards the

world around us, as figure 2.1. shows.

Figure 2.1. Peoples’ different orientations towards the world.

Most ideas have their basis in some old idea, something seen or experienced within the past, so

from this point of view most opportunities are not truly novel. For example, an old type of

Global

National

City

Neighbourhood

Sectional Interest

Today Next Next Next Life Children’s

W Week Year Few Years Time Lifetime

Space

Time

business can be given a new business model and professionalism like McDonalds did for

burgers and Holiday Inn did for motels. New technologies can be applied to old products and

processes like desktop publishing and email and domestic business models can be expanded

internationally like Coca Cola and Pizza Hut.

Many people mistake their personal aspirations for opportunity. For example people put their

money and efforts into a boutique, restaurant or spa for the wrong reasons because they like

fashion and shopping, food and cooking, or aromatherapy and massage, only to close down a

few months later because there was no real opportunity. In SME’s the values of the founder

and the firm are the same in many cases. The way we look for business opportunity is to a great

degree influenced by a hierarchy of personal and family aspirations and concerns that cannot

easily be separated from business goals. This can be dangerous if one is unaware of their

influence upon thinking. This hierarchy of personal, family, and business aspirations are

depicted in figure 2.2.

Figure 2.2. This hierarchy of personal, family, and business aspirations

Different types of opportunities in various market environments display different types of

characteristics. Imitative businesses like milk bars, flower shops, newsagents, and automobile

mechanics require a very low level of analysis and intuition to see these opportunities. Formal

strategy and tactical moves are also much less important for these types of businesses because

they tend to rely on passing trade and offer similar products to their competitors. The only

question requiring an intuitive answer that an entrepreneur will ask here is; if he or she opens a

business in a particular location, will there be enough business coming in to make it viable?

Strategic Business

Analysis Resources, networks,

capabilities, competitive environment, etc.

Business Goals

Family Values

The Vision Aspiration

Family Goals

Self Assessment

(Self-efficacy)

Decision Making Skills Knowledge

Personal Goals

Business

Competencies

Knowledge

Production & Operations

Marketing

Personnel

Financial

Risk Management

Horizontal and vertical expansion

Aspirations

Self view

Income needs

Time Horizon

View of retirement

Opportunity

cost of doing other activities

Passion

Family

Considerations

Generational evolution

Grooming successors

Family aspirations

Lifestyle

Attachment

Asset

Fulfillment

Value

Type

Needs

Wants

Liquidity needs

Alternatives

Future

(Retirement)

Time horizon

Investment options

Risk management

Tax planning

Opportunity cost of doing

other activities

Exit barriers

The Individual & Family Family history, Current family

livelihood, Current Family Status.

Motivational Origins

Opportunities in established markets served by medium to large companies like in the grocery

or hardware trade may require more analysis to identify opportunities with little use of

intuition. For example, one will analyse the market for unfulfilled gaps and seek to fill them

with new products, or move to new markets with existing products. Formal strategy plays a

much more important role in this arena, although tactical moves tend to be low. The important

intuitive question here is; whether there is enough demand for the new product?

Opportunities that are based on the discovery of new markets due to changing industry

structures or demographics for example, require high intuition to find them, using a low level of

analysis. For example although a growing aged population can be observed very easy, new

opportunities will tend to be intuitive rather than analytically based, i.e., this segment likes 50s

classic music, so will new businesses based on this idea be successful? The answers can only be

found out through trial and error. Entrepreneurs tend to carve out their product and market

niches using tactical moves rather than utilizing formal strategy.

Finally in markets where real technology breakthroughs occur, require high analysis and also

high levels of intuition are to identify opportunities. New products come from intuitive ideas

from what the technology can do. For example when Texas Instruments developed LED, the

researchers developed as many products they could that could utilize the technology like

calculators and watches, etc. New products come as ideas rather than from any market

analysis. Formal strategy is very important but a fair degree of trial and error is also required.

You saw that how tactical moves were important when plasma TVs and 3G mobile phones were

launched, and we are also seeing this with the advent of iPads and internet TV.

Figure 2.3. The various characteristics of different types of opportunities.

Opportunity construction primarily relies on a person’s intuitive thinking to tap into a person’s

creativity and imagination. How any idea will be developed will depend upon what information

a person knows, their life experiences, and how they connect all the pieces of information

together.

Curiosity and interest are two very important ingredients that help drive a person’s opportunity

awareness. Without these two ingredients important bits of information from the environment

may be missed or glossed over. Usually specific opportunities are spotted by people who work

within a particular industry or have related hobbies or interests. For example, Nike was formed

by track coach Bill Bowerman and middle distance runner Phil Knight who both had a passion

for their sport. They were able to see opportunities that others outside the running fraternity

may have not been able to see.

However occasionally people within an industry may become complacent and so accustomed to

the ways things are done that it becomes difficult for them to see any other ways of doing

Large Companies &

Consumer Type

Markets

High analytical & Low

intuitive opportunities,

high strategy & low tactical

exploitation

Breakthrough

Technology

High analytical and high

intuitive opportunities, high

strategy & high tactical

exploitation

Imitative Business

Low analytical & low intuitive

opportunities, low strategy &

low tactical exploitation

Entrepreneurial

Low analytical & high intuitive,

low strategy & high tactical

exploitation

Growing

importance

of formal

strategy

Growing importance

of tactical moves

Low

High

An

aly

tical

Low High Intuitive

things. Time and time again industry outsiders are able to spot these points of complacency and

become industry leaders within a very short time. The most famous story of recent times are

the young upstarts Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak who started Apple Computer and changed

the whole structure of the computer industry under IBM’s nose, which was focused on the

large commercial users. Likewise Kemmons Wilson saw that motels in America lacked quality

and consistency and formed Holiday Inn to provide the quality and consistency he felt they

wanted.

Many successful ideas are based on intuition and end up changing the way industries operate.

Microsoft, Dell, Disneyland, and Jims Mowing here in Australia are all good examples of that.

Mindfulness allows a person see the environment more clearly and become more sensitive as

we develop our personal mastery. Recent New York University research has shown that when

our mind relaxes part of our brain called the default neural network activates and processes our

thoughts unburdened and unencumbered by emotions and other cognitive biases. The closest

thing to explaining how this works is when we daydream, or when we are relaxing over dinner

or having a shower and suddenly get that ‘aha” thought that solves a problem that we haven’t

been able to fix all day. The more mindfulness, the better the perception of opportunities,

however other facets such as our experience are still vitally important, which without any

individual will not be able to perceive opportunity for new ventures, products, and services.

Mindfulness may enhance the ability to perceive and shape new opportunities through five

components that have been empirically tested by cognitive scientists;

• Openness to novelty – the ability to reason with relatively novel forms of stimuli,

• Alertness to distinction – the ability to distinguish minute differences in the details of an

object, action, or environment,

• Sensitivity to different contexts- tasks and abilities will differ according to the situational

context,

• Awareness of multiple perspectives – the ability to think dialectically – see different

perspectives of the same thing (we will discuss later), and

• Orientation in the present- paying attention to here and now.

One would assume that the degree of mindfulness an individual possesses will also influence

the depth of opportunity that can be observed within the environment. The table below shows

the different depth of ideas that can be observed and associated forms of thinking involved in

seeing and creating them.

Table 2.1. The different depth of Ideas

First Level Imitation See and belief, little intuitive thought

except for viability- logical thinking

Second Level Creative Imitation See and enhance, maybe with some

connection, logic, intuition and holistic

creativity

Third Level Creating a new

business Model

Connectivity of different pieces of

information, intuition, some imaginatively,

or through creation.

Fourth Level Creating something

new to the world

Complete holistic, intuition, imaginative

construction, building from deep and

sparse pieces of experience.

Concepts can be extracted and synergized from unrelated locations, objects and other business

models. For example, a person may secure a particular rental location and wish to create some

form of business model that would serve potential customers within that location. Potential

young customers around the precinct of a university like to gather at near campus restaurants

or coffee lounges for snacks and social gatherings. The general characteristics of a generic fast-

food business is that it is cheap, has a good standard of hygiene, good service, fast and efficient,

specializing in a particular food, people know what to expect and a meeting place for people.

After study of the situation some of the characteristics of a generic fast-food business can be

extracted according to what the potential entrepreneur feels are most important to the

potential clientele of the potential location and a new concept constructed. A hypothetical

result might be a charcoal BBQ Burger Grill which is conveniently located, cheap and

affordable, has good service, a unique and tasty charcoal grill, and is a convenient meeting

place with Wi-Fi, etc. This is called concept extraction where the potentially successful elements

of a concept are synergized together to create a new idea. This is shown pictorially in Figure

2.4.

Figure 2.4. A constructed concept of a charcoal BBQ Burger Grill.

Remember opportunities aren’t static and continually move. This is a major reason why

companies like Blockbuster Video faced financial problems in the US with the move to new

multimedia formats, Angus & Robertson faced financial problems here in Australia with the

increase of purchases of e-books and through websites like Amazon, and photo kiosks are

desperately trying to survive with the digital camera revolution.

Summary

• Finding opportunities is about being able to see them.

• The ability to see opportunity is not evenly distributed through the community because

people have different time and space orientations.

• Most new ideas have basis in old ideas.

• Many people mistake their own aspirations for opportunities.

• The way we see opportunities is strongly influenced by our personal and family

aspirations.

• Different types of opportunity have different types of characteristics.

Fastfood

(General Characteristics)

1. Cheap

2. Good standard of hygiene

3. Good service

4. Fast and efficient

5. Specialize in a particular food

6. Know what to expect

7. A meeting place for people

Charcoal Burger Grill

1. Location near young people

(university): convenient

2. Cheap and affordable

3. Good service

4. Authentic charcoal BBQ

burger grill (western style)

5. Convenient meeting place

with WiFi etc.

University

Location

Potential success

parameters

Co

nce

pt

Ext

ract

ion

Constructed Concept

Concept Extraction

A (location) + B (characteristics)

= C (constructed Concept)

A

B

C

• Constructing new opportunities requires creativity and imagination.

• Curiosity and interest are important in developing our opportunity awareness.

• Opportunities are usually spotted by people within that industry.

• Sometimes people from outside an industry see an opportunity that changes the way

things are done in an existing industry.

• Mindfulness allows you to see the environment more clearly and the more sensitive we

are, the deeper the type of opportunity we will see.

• New opportunities can be created through selecting and synergizing different attributes

of other ideas through the method we call concept extraction.

• Opportunities are always evolving and changing and we must align ourselves with this

evolution to survive.

Some More Intuition and Opportunity Tips:

• Attribution Scanning: Sometimes intuition has to be developed or triggered by what we

call attribution scanning. Attribution scanning involves looking at one small area of a

market; say a product segment of interest. Select a product, e.g. laundry detergent, and

start looking at all the different variations that can be made, i.e., form - liquid, solid, gas

(aerosol), variations – odour, formulation type, etc, attribute incorporation – with fabric

softener, with stain remover, with bleach, organic, etc., size, channel of distribution, use

of products, etc, etc, etc. Some ideas may be discounted because they are just plain silly,

while others may have already been taken up by other competitors, but eventually you

may find some combination that may look interesting as an opportunity. By focusing

during the day on something intensively, when you relax at night further ideas may

come to you without conscious thinking. Who knows, one of these thoughts may be an

insight that brings you success to the market.

Chapter Three

Although the business plan is a major part of business and entrepreneurial education, very few

ventures actually start with formal business plans. This chapter looks at how important it is to

have a big picture of what you want to do. Any big picture that has been elaborated upon can

be checked for its viability by going through mental checklists. The chapter breaks down

opportunity into its individual elements which can separately be validated through these

checklists. Checklists will also highlight to an entrepreneur how well prepared they are to exploit

any said opportunity.

Intuition and the Big Picture

Picture Robert de Castella winning the Commonwealth games 1982 marathon in Brisbane, and

again four years later in Edinburgh, Cathy Freeman winning gold in the Sydney 2000 Olympic

Games 400 metres, and Ian Thorpe winning the gold medal in the 400 metres freestyle in the

pool at the same Olympics, and again in Athens in 2004, all proud moments for them, and

proud moments for us as Australians. Each of them before stepping out onto the road, track, or

into the pool had a big picture in their mind about what they were going to do.

The visualization of your future business as a big picture in your mind is no different. It’s like an

artist painting a masterpiece on a sheet of canvass, which in your case is your mind. A sketch

visualization may occur very quickly like some form of great insight into something, but the

details may take some time to slowly build up until you have a full mental business model in

your head. This imagery, mental picture, imagined model, represents a desired future that we

would like to see. We in fact see ourselves inside of this model as its founder, creator,

entrepreneur, and steward. This model is built out of pure imagination, based on our intuitive

sense of the world around us. A picture of how we can convert the world we live in to a much

more desirable one (see Figure 3.1.).

Figure 3.1. The big picture of Air Asia.

Starting any venture or enterprise without a mental picture is just as dangerous as a pilot flying

across the Simpson Desert in a small plane without a map or any navigation instruments. The

pilot will get lost in the Simpson Desert and the entrepreneur will get lost in his or her

enterprise.

After an opportunity has been found, it must be evaluated to determine whether it is viable as

a venture and worth putting in your time and resources. Viability is relative to the resources,

skills, and networks you possess, so what may be viable to you may not necessarily be viable to

someone else.

The Business Plan you have when you don’t have a Business Plan.

The author’s own research has shown that most entrepreneurs don’t actually develop any

formal written business plan before starting out on a new business, but instead rely on a well

thought out mental model of the enterprise they want to develop, the products they want to

make, the potential customers they want to service, in a manner consistent with the resources

they either have or can acquire from somewhere. It’s all in the big picture.

An exciting low

cost airline to fly

on

Young &

invigorating image

Baggage

No baggage transfers

No connection with

other airline baggage

services

Baggage surcharge

Auto-check with no

baggage

Internet Bookings

Limited use of

travel agents

Fast Aircraft

turn-around times

Not burdened by

traditional air and ground

crew procedures

No connection with other

airlines

Standardized aircraft to

cut down on

maintenance costs

Extra means of

revenue

Paid snacks & meals

Seating

Blankets

Computerized ticketing

methods

Related businesses -

hotels

General savings on

overheads

Low landing charges

and terminal fees

Headquarters located

at airport terminal

Young good looking

air & ground crews

Modern and trendy

aircraft interiors

Advertising image

The big picture resembles a business model, laying down the strengths and taking account of

the weaknesses that the entrepreneur must compensate for, highlighting what already exists

and what needs to be procured to make the opportunity something of a success.

When a person is not affected by overconfidence and can look at a situation clearly, the

entrepreneur will have mental checklists of questions underlying the big picture that require

intuitive answers. It is the sum of these answers, that enables the entrepreneur to make a “go”

or “no go” decision about the venture. These decisions can only be made intuitively as no

means of analysis will assist in arriving at this “go” decision, as there are too many factors

which cannot be analysed rationally involved. This is the time when entrepreneurs must trust

their intuition.

Underlying any opportunity is a structure which can be examined through a checklist of

questions. These checklists of questions are basically the same for a delicatessen, a burger

restaurant, a boutique, a cosmetic manufacturing enterprise, toy distributor, or produce

importer. Positive answers to the checklists enable an entrepreneur to exploit it with some

confidence. Negative answers show where weaknesses lie. Again, it is not necessary to write all

this down as for many people these are mental processes, but sitting down and going through

all these questions makes a lot of sense before one makes a final decision.

Figure 3.2. The elements of opportunity that must be examined.

The questions that can confirm the big picture is viable would include;

Networks

Skills,

Capabilities

Resources

Making

Connection

Vision

Platform

Time &

Space

Strategy

Competitive

Field

Time & Space:

Is this the right time to be launching a product or engaging in this type of business?

Are people ready for this?

Is this the right location for the business?

Do people in the location I am thinking of use this type of product, service, or event?

Vision Platform:

Are there any issues that are clouding my thinking?

Am I seeing this opportunity because I want to see it?

Where am I biased here?

What do my emotions tell me?

What is my ego telling me?

What does my reasoning tell me?

Making Connections:

Is what I am seeing truly viable?

Do the idea connect in a way that other people will see the value and become enthusiastic

about? i.e., a product idea.

Does this new way of doing things (new business model), or new product, service, or event

provide new value to customers?

When I work back from my intuition, does the reason support the intuition? Why? Why not?

Resources:

Do I have the resources to pull this venture off?

If not, do I have access to resources that will enable me to pull off this venture?

Are the resources I need generally available?

Do I have, understand, or can acquire any forms of technology required to exploit the

opportunity?

Will I be able to get resources I might need in the future?

Are there any resources I need that are scarce?

Are there any particular resources I can use that give me some form of advantage over other

firms?

Skills & Capabilities:

Do I have the skills and capabilities necessary to undertake this venture?

Can I learn the required skills and develop the required capabilities during the early stages of

the venture?

Are there any skills or competencies I don’t have?

Is there a difficult learning curve for me to master these skills and competencies?

Are there any particular skills or competencies that may create a barrier to entry to the

business in mind?

Can I acquire the necessary skills and capabilities needed for the venture?

Will I be able to manage the venture?

Networks:

Who are the key stakeholders?

What are my relationships to them?

Do I have the necessary networks of friends and associates to enable me to run this venture?

i.e., in securing goods, materials, services necessary to exploit the opportunity, in the

marketplace, in the financial markets.

Can I acquire the necessary network to enable me to run this venture?

Competitive Field:

Are their customers for my product, service, or event?

Who are my competitors?

How do they operate?

What are their strengths and weaknesses?

Can I match or better them?

What do I have that they don’t have that would make a difference in the market?

Is there room for another competitor in the market?

Or do I have no competition? Why?

What are the existing competitors in the market do when I enter the market?

Can I handle this?

What are the barriers to entering the market? Can I overcome them?

Can I create barriers for others following me?

Is the market large enough to sustain my business?

Strategy:

What strategy is needed to succeed?

Do I have the resources, skills, capabilities, and networks to pursue this strategy?

Will I emulate others, or will others be able to emulate me very easily?

Are there alternative strategies that I can switch to if the initial one fails?

Checklists are nothing new. An airline pilot flies a passenger airliner from Melbourne to

Brisbane on checklists, just as the crew of the lunar module of Apollo 11 did in July 1969, when

humankind made the first landing on another celestial body other than our own, the Moon.

New Coles and Woolworths stores are developed and opened using checklists, just like the

McDonalds store in your neighbourhood is operated through procedural checklists.

What hasn’t been said much before is that making the decision to “go” with a start-up is

usually an intuitive decision making process, where the entrepreneur should touch base with

the types of questions listed above. Nobody is less astute or less of an entrepreneur for doing

so; in fact this is how good decisions are made. The former Harvard University (Now Tufts

University) Professor Amar Bhide said that entrepreneurs who make quick intuitive decisions

are usually more successful than entrepreneurs who take time to analyze the issues involved

before making their decision. Surprised, just ask any Ford executive involved in the launch of

the Edsel. By the time they had made a thorough analysis of the market, the market changed

and the Edsel was launched into a completely different market situation than the one that was

analysed at the time.

Everybody Does it

It isn’t necessary to formally write down all the information and create a beautiful business plan

(unless you need it for other purposes like raising equity finance). What is important is that a

person considers all the issues honestly to themselves. If writing it down on paper helps to

organize your thoughts then by all means, write things down to organize your thoughts.

Your checklists link the opportunity to action. After going through the checklists, you know

what you need and what to do. You now have enough knowledge to guide you through the

start-up and initial strategy direction you will take the new firm. Mental checklists enable a

person to make a number of decisions based on subjective information very quickly. This is

what an entrepreneur would call decision making on the run, and the strategy gurus call

flexibility and agility. Analysing mentally issues through checklists is part of developing

entrepreneurial competency and personal mastery, depending upon what you want to call it. I

call this guided intuition.

Using mental models of the big picture and breaking them down into the critical elements is an

exercise in intuition that can enhance your chances of success. Through the big picture model,

resources, timing, place, skills, the adequacy of networks, the competitive field, and strategy

can be examined more closely to determine whether the entrepreneur is ready to take on the

opportunity in question. Failure to develop a big picture of a proposed venture with the various

mental checklists involved will usually lead to shocks and surprises that may jeopardize venture

viability and even lead to venture failure. It never ceases to amaze the author of how many

people are willing to spend their savings on leasing expensive premises and equipping it to

produce food, cosmetics, or plant fertilizers, etc., only to believe that customers will appear out

of nowhere to buy their products.

A big picture model will alert entrepreneurs to potential problems. Solving these problems

before they happen will save a lot of money and heartache needed to get out of an expensive

lease if the venture fails due to problems that could have been easily foreseen. On the contrary,

those who have visualized the big picture and intuitively gone through all the issues, asking the

right questions have a much greater chance of success. The thought of being successful is half

the journey.

Summary

• Successful people need to see the big picture of what they want to do. Ventures are no

different.

• The big picture is used more by entrepreneurs than business plans.

• The big picture is a way of responding to an opportunity. The opportunity can be broken

down into specific elements. Through examining each element through a checklist and

questions, an entrepreneur can determine both the viability of the opportunity and

their preparedness to exploit it.

Some More Intuition and the Big Picture Tips:

• Evaluating your competitors: Using the big picture diagram (figure 3.1.) you can

evaluate your competitors’ products and services attributes, benefits to consumers,

strategies, strengths and weaknesses, and capabilities, but constructing their business

models.

Chapter Four

This chapter examines the chaos of start-ups and the importance of intuition in helping to set

priorities. Reasoning is sometimes too logical for start-ups and intuition is better. The concept of

false intuition where your ego gangs up with your reasoning is discussed, where rising above

this trap by using your interpretation of the big picture is a sign of personal mastery.

Intuition and the Start-up

If any of you have been involved in a start-up you will know how chaotic and stressful it can be.

There are so many important things to do, so many issues to attend to, along with the need to

absorb all things going on around you, and come up with the priorities of things to do. What

makes it even more difficult is that you are learning as you go along about what is important

and what is not so important. Money is going out, with none coming in and the clock is ticking.

And in most cases this must be done “on the run” without time for planning.

Successful start-ups require you to find the path that is most important, most effective, and

most efficient in influencing the outcome of what you want, called the “critical path” in project

management. This must be done with minimal use of resources so they are conserved and can

be utilized across the board for all things necessary during the start-up phase. The start-up

period is difficult to plan because there are so many unknown issues and surprises ahead, that

can’t adequately be planned for in advance. As the saying goes “you must fly by the seat of

your pants” intuitively, feeling your way and hopefully moving ahead in a manner that allows

your start-up to be successful.

In a start-up situation there is a “critical thread of activities” that will position you where you

want to be in relation to the big picture you envisage. There are many matters that require your

attention, including matters like designing your business cards, picking the colour of your chair

(if you buy them), to much more important matters like who will be your customers, What

equipment will you require in the warehouse, what materials should be used in product

packaging, or how should your services be divided up and charged to the customer. This all

requires serious time and resources management. You don’t want to wear your resources down

too thinly by applying them to the wrong things. No point having flashy business cards and

beautiful office chairs if you don’t have packaging for your product and customers don’t come

to your office. It’s a matter of priorities. Don’t laugh, in a situation of the chaos of a start-up it’s

so easy to spend in the wrong areas, leaving you short later for the things you really need. It’s a

really common story.

This is where intuition becomes so important in what you do, as we all know it’s better to have

a tight gut, rather than a loose gut, for health reasons, if not anything else. In this case it’s

about the health of your start-up enterprise. One has to know what resources to acquire, i.e.,

should I spend the whole day travelling across town to pick up some unwanted office furniture

or warehouse racking and organize transport back to my new premises, or not? Where finance

can be obtained (if necessary); and yes you may have to use the credit card and pay the extra

interest to make ends meet. Good intuition helps you prioritise all these things, which

minimizes your outlays. Intuition, don’t leave home without it. You need it to maintain self

buoyancy throughout the chaotic start-up phase.

In a start-up you have to allocate the time between setting up your administration, product

design and development, production, marketing, and sales. There is no correct formula about

how to allocate this time, however the author has always found that about 60% of the time was

spent in initial sales, 30% in product development, and the remainder in setting up

administration. However where the product and production processes are more complex and

products might be made for order, the majority of focus and time may be put into the

development of production facilities, maybe even 80-90%. Every business will have its own

specific optimum time allocation.

What compounds problems in a start-up situation is that there is no historical budgeting to fall

back on, so start-up budgets are really about your gut feelings on the matter. No doubt, this will

change regularly. I have never met an entrepreneur that has been able to keep their start-up

costs according to the laid down budget set before the start-up. Matters requiring spending are

often missed, unaccounted for, under-estimated, or the implications misunderstood. This is

where the sense of intuition is so important to help prioritise where the time and money should

go.

The author has found that during the chaos of start-ups, there are three distinct influences

upon what we do. The first is our reasoning, where for example we can reason logically “that

we need business cards because our customers expect them and we must show our corporate

image.” Another example may be that “we should buy the office furniture we need to be

comfortable because we spend between one-third and one-half of our life at work.” Reasoning is

good, but reasoning alone can make us broke, because it’s all too logical.

This is where intuition comes in. Intuition is not logical and takes a wider perspective than

reasoning. Intuition decides a sense of importance and priority against all the other outstanding

issues. However don’t mistake your ego for intuition. You may want to have a beautiful

business card because it makes you feel good. You may want that executive chair because it

makes you feel in control. But this is not intuition.

Intuition as we have seen is related to the big picture and is more concerned about your needs,

rather than your wants. In a start-up situation you buy what you need, not what you want. Your

ego will support your reasoning and disguise itself as your intuition – your false intuition. It

works very hard to convince you, sometimes burying your intuition into the background. Be

aware that it is your intuition working for you and not your ego.

Rising above your reasoning/ego combination with your big picture based intuition is a sign of

personal mastery, promoting the wise old steward within you. Don’t have it any other way, go

for the old wise steward over a rampant ego advising you any day. Be alert to the signs of false

intuition. False intuition excites you and placates your wants. Your true intuition is concerned

about your needs.

Intuition helps you determine which advice is in your best interests. That’s why it’s important to

step back in pressured situations and identify who inside you is really talking. Is it your true

intuition or is it your reasoning and ego ganging up on you?

Finally, intuition is a way of organizing your knowledge and applying it to situation to situation.

Without intuition your knowledge carries little weight in decision making until your intuition

tells you which knowledge is best to use. Sound intuition is wisdom, which is what you need in

the start-up phase of your enterprise.

Summary

• Starting a new venture is a chaotic time where it is very difficult to prioritise what needs

to be done.

• During the start-up phase intuition provides you with “personal buoyancy” which helps

to see order in the chaos and do things according to priority.

• Reasoning is sometimes too logical for start-ups.

• There is no set formula about how to allocate your time and resources in a start-up.

• It is very easy to mistake our ego for our intuition.

• In start-ups reasoning may not necessarily be the best way to make decisions.

• Rising above your reasoning/ego combination and following your big picture is a sign of

personal mastery.

• Intuition is a means of applying knowledge from situation to situation. Intuition gives

weight to knowledge. Sound intuition is wisdom.

Some More Intuition and the Start-up Tips:

• Learning to trust your intuition: Try and find situations in your life where it has been

better to follow intuition rather than your reasoning. For example, you don’t do the

washing or mow the lawn today because it “feels” like it is going to rain. Was your

intuition sound in the cases you found?

Chapter Five

Entrepreneurial marketing is very different from conventional marketing in that resources and

information are lacking to make informed decisions. Intuition is thus very important, where

most breakthrough ideas are the result of intuition rather than market research. The key to

entrepreneurial marketing is flexibility and experimentation until one has found the best

combination of the best products, services, events, and strategies. To achieve this flexibility

stubbornness and ego must be transcended with intuition. Finally to develop one’s place in the

market, an entrepreneur must examine the opportunity they have seen carefully, and configure

their strategies with relevant resources to support it.

Intuition and Marketing

Marketing for an established firm and an entrepreneurial start-up is as different as chalk and

cheese. Established firms usually have recognised brands, stable channels of distribution,

dedicated marketing personnel, and fixed budgets to carry out their activities, while

entrepreneurial start-ups usually have none of these at their disposal and are starting from

scratch. An entrepreneurial start-up venture with very limited resources must create what

established companies already have under very vulnerable conditions. If your competitors

notice that you exist and you look like being a potential threat, they are likely to come down on

you like a ‘ton of bricks’.

Entrepreneurial marketing has become the flavor of the month where the general message is

that ‘you have to get more with less’. Most of you would have heard of terms like viral

advertising, viral marketing, and guerilla marketing. All these methods are aimed at getting

publicity and into the market in ways that require small amounts of resources. You have to go

back to the basics of doing your own brochures and distributing, giving out samples where

customers are, using social and other free forms of media, getting publicity in some way or

another, generally undertaking activities that require time as the major resource. These are

very effective where your market is localized or specifically segmented and less effective as the

market spreads out to the general community.

An effective entrepreneur marketer is someone who thinks in creative ways about how to

maximize publicity and get promotional mileage for the new venture’s products with very

limited resources. Again this requires imagination, and intuitive innovative approaches to

marketing and promotion.

As we saw in the introduction of the book, one has to really understand the market, products,

customers, competitors, the supply chain, methods of promotion, etc., to really develop any

reliable intuition. This means rolling up your sleeves and getting down to the market until it

metaphorically ‘runs in your blood’. Then you begin to develop the wisdom about the market

that will give you advantage over those snotty nosed MBA types employed by the large

companies who are more interested in the next rage over the weekend than why customers

buy their company’s products. This is called the intuitive advantage that gives deep insight into

the market that larger companies have lost and don’t have (in many cases, not all).

With the intuitive advantage you sense your moves rather than think about them. New ways of

promotion, new products and product extensions become something you sense rather than

something your rationally think out. I watched my father think up the concept of a continuous

air freshener with a silk flower on top, which he named Flower Gel which today would look

corny. Many doubted him, but the launch went ahead and it for a while became the best

selling air freshener on the Australian market. There was no way that any rationally based

market research could have told him whether the concept would be successful or not. Winners

like this can only be the product of intuition.

Excuse the pun, you smell success and you go for it – there is no way of rationalizing it out.

Please rationalize for me why one restaurant can be incredibly successful, while another next

door can be a terrible failure. We have landed on the moon, but we are still not sure why one

concept can be successful while others are dismal failures. Thomas Edison, John Rockefeller,

Henry Ford, Ray Kroc, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, Michael Dell, Jerry Yang and

David Filo, Jeff Bezos, and more recently Mark Zuckerberg all have one thing in common. None

of them did any formal market research before they started their ventures. All were acts of

intuition.

The process of being an entrepreneur is about moving from being a market outsider where

things look all mysterious to take the inside running of the market where you make your

decisions from the gut; just like all the above did. This is where the big changes can occur. Who

would have ever thought that milk we drank at school (yes it got quickly sour in the sun) would

one day be “sexy Big M” (go and have a look at the original ads on You Tube) or one of the

other adult brands now in the market. This could not have been a rational act, only an intuitive

one. Who would have thought that one day we would use our mobile phones to take the family

snaps. Who would have thought that we would have 24 hour news, movie, sports, drama, and

educational programs coming down by satellite into our homes. These ideas didn’t come from

detailed market analysis, they came from the gut. This is the power of intuition in the market.

Intuition Matches Dreams with Reality in the Marketplace

The aim of marketing is to either attract consumers away from existing products, or create new

sources of value. Therefore the key to success is finding new sources of value consumers will

accept. This is heavily dependent on intuitive thinking but not a straight forward process.

Before any start-up an entrepreneur usually visualizes something they have in mind for the

market. When an entrepreneur launches a new product, rarely if at all, do consumers “beat a

path to your door.” Extensive modifications to products are usually required during the initial

marketing process, both before and after introduction to the market.

This difference between what the entrepreneur visualizes and what the consumer will accept

can only be bridged through intuition. Intuition drives an entrepreneur’s flexibility to change

their ideas about the products, events, or services they offer to the market. Without this

intuitive flexibility, there would be many more failed ventures because of stubbornness to

change when original ideas are not accepted. To do this successfully means transcending the

ego.

This is how entrepreneurs learn what consumers really want through the trial and error

process. One case in point is a boutique handmade chocolate manufacturer in Collingwood

called Mámor Chocolates. The company was recently established by the proprietor Hanna

Frederick producing the most superb Hungarian style handmade chocolates. However sales

through retail outlets and markets were very poor around Melbourne. Hanna started organizing

tasting events which really became an instant success and today Mámor is a very popular “word

of mouth” promoted organizer of events which sell lots of chocolate.

Intuition is what guides the entrepreneur about what the consumer wants, as very little

meaningful market research can be done to assist in making these types of decisions, especially

with the types of concepts outlined above.

Developing Your Place in the Market

As mentioned in the last section, marketing is about attracting consumers away from existing

products, or finding a new niche or position where “new” value can be created for the

customer. Once this opportunity has been identified, one can go about creating the strategy

chain that will best serve your purpose based on what resources, skills and capabilities, and

networks you have available. The steps in this process are shown in figure 5.1. below.

Figure 5.1. The steps involved in creating your place in the market.

If one is able to match the opportunity with the right strategy correctly, there is little direct

competition, and there are a sufficient number of consumers who see the product or service as

providing some new form of value for them, then the new venture may have a rapid rise to

success. Just look at the success of the iPad.

Marketing is about flexibility which allows evolution, but the big breakthroughs are made

through intuition. Undertaking market research to determine that more people like red rather

Opportunity Newly identified

opportunity

Needed

Strategies

What strategies are required to successfully

exploit the new opportunity and meet the

organizations new goals?

Needed

Organization

What type of organization and

business model is needed to support the

selected strategy?

Needed

Skills & capabilities

What skills, competencies and technologies are

needed to support the new business model

and strategy?

Needed

Resources

What resources are needed to support

skills, competencies, technologies, new

business model and strategy?

Needed

Networks

What networks are needed to exploit the opportunity, acquires

skills, technologies and resources, support the new business model

and strategy?

Goals

What goals are needed to exploit

the newly identified opportunity?

than blue packaging will never create any future breakthroughs that intuition will. After all the

automobile, airplane, motorbike, home computer, notebook, Pizza Hut, and KFC, were all

products built upon intuition rather than analysis. The second issue is that stubbiness blocks

intuition and evolution of the market which is where new opportunities come from.

Summary

• The modus operandi of entrepreneurial and conventional marketing is very different.

• Entrepreneurial marketing requires imaginative and intuitive innovative approaches to

marketing and promotion.

• Entrepreneurial marketing can be a very effective tool in a local area, but becomes more

difficult as the market area grows.

• You really have to develop an in-depth understanding of the market to operate with

intuitive advantage within it.

• Most of the great market successes were based on intuition.

• The aim of marketing is to either attract consumers away from existing products, or

create new sources of value.

• Entrepreneurs have to work hard initially to get consumers to accept new products and

usually have to modify their concepts through trial and error and intuition.

• To be flexible in the marketplace, you must transcend your ego and stubbornness. This

is where entrepreneurs really learn what consumers want. Market research is of little

help in this matter.

• Entrepreneurs must find new niches to establish themselves within and then align their

strategies with the opportunity, with coordinated resource, capability, and network

support.

Some More Intuition and the market Tips:

• Learning the Market: The more intricate your knowledge about the market is the better

intuition you will develop about it. Learn in detail; who are the competitors? How big

and powerful are they? What products do they have? What range of extensions and

varieties do they have? What are the price ranges? What positions are there in the

market? Where can you buy the products? Etc., etc, etc. Learn the market until you start

to feel it and sense what changes are happening. After some time you will be able to

anticipate what will happen – this is when your intuition kicks in.

Chapter Six

Intuition and Sales

Sales build a business and the art of sales requires specific skills, experience, and practice to be

effective. Intuition is paramount through the sales process as an aid to guide the salesperson in

making successful sales. Intuition can be developed through knowing the basic sales steps and

practicing them to build up experience.

The importance of sales to the start-up company

Most companies begin on simple ideas. It is the success in bringing these ideas to reality and

their consumer acceptance that determines how successful the company will be. Therefore if a

company’s ideas in the form of a product or service are not successfully sold to the consumer,

the company will not exist for long.

Where would have Thomas Edison been if he had not been able to sell the concept of electricity

to the general public in the 1880s?

Where would McDonald’s be today if Ray Kroc in 1955 did not sell the concept of standardized

burger quality and family orientated surroundings for dinning?

Where would have Jay Van Andel and Richard DeVos been if they did not sell the concept of

Nutrilite to the public, later forming AMWAY?

In each case it is not the invention or idea that is important, selling the product or idea to the

public is what makes or breaks the entrepreneur. There are plenty of failed entrepreneurs with

brilliant ideas or inventions in the trash-bin of history who were not able to sell their concept to

others.

In the majority of cases, start-ups are about sales and nothing else. In a start-up company, the

entrepreneur has to work harder and smarter than established companies just to survive the

first six months to one year. It’s a steep learning curve for one with little experience, but a

person can become very competent very quickly if they know the basic sales steps.

Sales are the frontline of all the plans you have for your idea and venture. It’s make or break

and no other company functions can be sustained long without sales. Sales are the driving force

of the company. The wellbeing of the company and everybody within it is dependent upon the

sales function.

When I first joined the family business as a junior salesperson, one of the veterans pulled me

aside one day and told me in no joking a tone that “a company is like a cricket match…..the

salesmen are the batsmen, the production people are bowlers, and the accountants are the

scorers.” Being a salesperson is a noble profession just like being a sportsperson, a samurai, or

a commando – all having a number of important things in common; skill, practice and

experience, with intuition as the guiding light.

The Noble Profession

Indeed sales is a noble profession, often forgotten about in the entrepreneurship and

management books, even with the importance it has to the wellbeing of the firm. It is through

sales that people know your company. Sales are almost a totally unsupervised environment

where tact and social intelligence are important assets. Most of your and employees pressures

and stresses will come from the sales area, and instant decisions have to be made on an almost

daily basis. Sales requires problem solving skills, respect and like for the products you sell, a

high level of self confidence, a willingness to sell and learn, an ability to get on with all types of

manners and personalities, and the ability to take the hard knocks on the chin. One also needs

high energy, patience, perseverance, a slight competitive tendency, and an ability to empathise

with others. Least to say, sales is not only about working hard, but working smart, as one has to

think all the time. Sales are about the abovementioned skills and above all, intuition which

luckily can be built up and developed, as we will see.

Here are the Basic Principles

Before moving onto the basic sales process it is important to understand some of the basic

principles of sales. First, it is important to understand that very few sales are actually achieved

through rational decisions. Customers will generally not be very enthusiastic at first about the

products or services you offer. One must always remember that sales are not an argument and

winning any argument will generally not win any sale. Likewise, a sales interview where the

buyer does not engage the seller with any objections, will also rarely result in a sale. Sales are

created through systematic work, flexibility in approaches, tact, pleasantness, but with a

dynamic and forceful approach.

Most sales approaches fail because we fail to communicate directly to the customer,

understand how the customer really thinks, and don’t bother to follow up. Rarely on the first

interview will you get any sale. Sometimes we blame our failure on anything else but ourselves,

and remain too rigid in our approach, believing what we are doing is best. Intuition can help

prevent these types of failure if it is cultivated enough to help us understand what is going on

with the customer.

The product or service is actually of secondary importance. We don’t sell the product but

actually stimulate the customers need for it, or in the case of a trade or B to B customer,

stimulate the need for sales/profit.

Fortunately our ability to sell can be improved through knowledge, experience and a constant

will to improve. The more we learn, experience, and practice, the more our intuition will grow

and guide us through the whole process.

Building up Sales Skills

Generally customers have little interest in new innovations. Habit is a major part of our lives,

where in the buying domain, risk and change are generally avoided. The customer is afraid of

taking risks and wants to avoid extra effort. He or she may not want to improve present

conditions and dislikes being criticized by those around them for making any “wrong” decisions.

This is a major barrier to the entry of new products, services, and suppliers to the market. This

attitude has prevented many new products succeeding in the market. We must portray our

products and services as simplifications or developments that will fit easily into existing habits,

rather than being something radical. We as salespeople must make allowances for these

reactions and must recognize and influence customers if we are to be successful. The less habit

is changed – the better the chance of gaining a sale. Again intuition is the tool that tells us our

progress and guides the whole case we put across.

Presenting Our Case

The key in presenting any sales case requires the salesperson to;

1. Convince any customer that they are not the only one. Customers will welcome proof

that the product is practical and many others use the product.

2. Convince any customer that new product acceptance requires no special effort, by

offering help, instructions and advice on the introduction of the product.

3. Listen to criticism about the product, where one must be sensitive to any justified

resistance based on the need to change habits. Don’t force people to change their

habits. It is very difficult to convince someone of something he or she doesn’t want to

be convinced of. He or she must go through a change. We must allow time for this

process and develop the new idea, step by step (it can take weeks or months

sometimes). Don’t take it head on and don’t find fault with the customer’s attitude.

4. Continued service through regular meetings will help initiate the required change in

habits.

Patience, enthusiasm, time, and especially intuition are required to effectively put a case across

to potential customers.

Gaining New Customers

As mentioned, potential customers usually provide resistance to buying new products. Some of

these reasons can be summarized as follows;

1. There is a general tendency for customers to test a salesperson’s will and strength. With

experience, intuition will tell you when this is just a game or a much deeper hesitancy

on the part of the customer.

2. Customers like to observe salespeople before buying from them. Intuition makes you

aware of this observation period and to develop empathy with the potential customer.

3. Customers are also busy people and intuition will tell you, when to persist and when to

back down.

4. In B to B buying many businesses have a number of formal steps they must go through

before dealing with the new supplier and buying a new product. Opening a new account

takes a lot of work and one must also identify who is really the decision maker. Also

remember a customer may have a limited budget or be thinking about the next stock-

take.

Steps in the First Time Sale

Now let’s have a look at the basic steps required to make a sale to a new customer. The biggest

success factor is your willingness to call on new customers. The best time to call on new

customers is when you are having a good day and on a psychological high.

The first step is to determine the potential of the new customer. Can they use the product? Can

they afford the new product? Do they use enough of the product to make it economical to call

on them? The answer to all these questions usually has to come from a mental summing up

through intuition.

With a B to B customer, one must determine the type of purchasing system the customer uses.

In many cases where an outlet may be a branch, purchasing is conducted from a central office,

etc. These issues may require some inquiries, so be friendly to all, as this will help you find the

correct person. People generally like to help someone with a pleasant demeanor.

Plan your visit – anything not planned is likely to fizzle. Remember your sales arguments before

you meet the potential customer. If possible, have samples, or in the case of a service all the

necessary printed material to help you explain. Try to get the best impression across to the

customer, especially when the customer is busy or distracted – body language counts. Try and

use a little humor (not dirty) to build up some rapport and empathy. Anticipate the objections

the buyer will put across and how you will deal with them. Plan how to start you sales meeting.

You are like a samurai who must improvise according to the circumstances of the meeting.

Intuition is your only friend during this process.

Empathy is a very important ingredient in the sales process. Empathy is a capacity we have to

connect to others and feel what they are feeling. Empathy helps a person know emotionally

what others are experiencing. Empathy is a type of imagination where we imagine what and

how another person feels. Through our sensitivity we pick up other people’s body movements,

facial expressions, tone of voice and narrative, as a means to sense their feelings, emotions and

beliefs. Through empathy we reduce interpersonal ambiguity.

However we must be very careful to the differences within the various signs we read and pick

up from others. For example a parent may have an aspiration about further education for their

children, but what are the sub-conscious reasons behind their aspirations? This is not

necessarily easy (even for trained psychologists) to determine without time to compare

narratives and other signs given at other time by the parents. The potential motivations for a

parent’s aspiration for their child’s higher education are shown in Figure 6.1. The reality could

be any one or combination of these reasons.

“We would be very

happy if our

children undertook

higher education”

Attempt to

impress listener

Deny an unhappy

family life

Cultural

expectations

Keeping up with the

“Jones”

Could be the truth

Narrative device of

optimism

Keeping Face

Showing off

Figure 6.1. Possible reasons why a parent has aspirations for their

child to undertake further education.

Often the potential customer may put up a last reason why they don’t want to buy the product,

sort of like straw resistance (discussed under objections). Once answering this objection, don’t

be scared to ask for an order as sometimes it is difficult for the customer to conclude the

discussion and it will just continue. Intuition will tell you when to ask, and when it is time to

conclude, successfully or unsuccessfully.

If you are turned down (and this maybe 50% of the time) – evaluate. Sit down and go through

his or her objections and how you handled them. Think about what to do next, listen to your

intuition immediately after the meeting and record it in your dairy. Plan the next call and follow

up.

Objections and How to Overcome Them

The sales meeting is primarily about objections a potential buyer will put up and how you

handle them. Objections are a normal part of the selling process, and without them, sales are

rarely made. The salesperson must identify the objections if he or she is going to persuade a

customer to buy and make a sale. Objections actually help the salesperson as they indicate a

show of interest from the buyer. Once again you tool of trade is your intuition.

The only type of objection that is dangerous is one that the salesperson doesn’t pick up, and/or

doesn’t have any answer for.

The basic types of objections are:

1. Unspoken objections where the customer is not too sure how to express themselves (or

is unable to because the salesperson does not give them a chance). You need your

empathy here to pick these types of objections up.

2. Prejudice and preconceived opinions that are usually illogical and emotional objections.

Reason and logic cannot counter them and your intuition is required to see where the

customer is really coming from. Highly refined intuition is needed here.

3. Malicious objections where the customer puts the salesperson under discomfort, which

may arise from the temperament of the customer. Intuition and patience is required

here.

4. Simple requests for information that require further information to make a decision.

You need intuition to read this need from the customer.

5. Prestige objections without any factual foundation which are usually raised just to show

off to try to impress the salesperson and other listeners. Intuition will tell you when to

placate the ego of the customer.

6. Objective objections about the proposal itself are requests to negotiate, where intuition

is very important to read what is required to gain the sale.

7. General sales resistance that has a general prevailing negativity towards the

salesperson. This usually occurs at the beginning and experience and intuition will guide

you through handling this type of resistance, and finally

8. The “last stand” where a final objection may be raised shortly before the customer

decides to buy. Intuition will tell you that the tone of voice will indicate that the

customer is ready to buy once this objection is settled.

Dealing with Objections

With experience, intuition will tell you the right time to answer any objections. This is just as

important as the answer itself. You can answer any objection;

1. Before they are expressed: especially if you sense the customer is about to make a

particular objection. It may be a good tactic to forestall the customer by raising the

question yourself. This saves you contradicting the customer and reducing the risk of an

argument. Otherwise you may purposely wait for the customer to raise the objection

and choose to answer it immediately after it has been raised.

2. Answering the objection immediately: is the most natural time to answer the query and

may enable the salesperson to run on with the presentation arguments in a smooth

manner. This may go like …”I’m glad you brought this matter up as most customers had

that worry until….”, using the objection to reassure the customer that he or she is not

the only one. Again intuition is the tool of choice here.

3. Answering all objections later: delay your answers if you can’t come up with a

satisfactory answer immediately. Delay your answer if you don’t want to contradict the

customer directly. Delay your answer if the objection is not important, and delay your

answer if you feel the objection is irrelevant. Get the idea of the importance of intuition

here?

4. Not answering objections: Leave objections alone if you feel they will disappear during

the progression of the presentation, and certainly leave them alone if they are made

from anger. Don’t take the bait. Don’t answer the objection if you think there is no harm

in letting the customer think he or she is right. This is where advanced intuition comes

in.

Approaches in Dealing with Objections

Some simple rules about dealing with objections are as follows;

1. Identify the type of objection as this will help you understand how to deal with it.

2. Answer in a friendly manner to prevent getting bogged down on any single objection.

3. Never directly contradict the customer unless you don’t want the sale, use “but”.

4. Show respect for the buyers views, nobody will buy from a person who doesn’t respect

them.

5. Agree with objections that increase the buyer’s prestige and status to maximize the

“feel good” factor.

6. Refrain from giving strong opinions, leave that to people running for political office.

7. Reply concisely so the customer understands what you are talking about. A customer

who doesn’t understand the salesperson is not likely to buy the product.

8. Don’t deal with the objection longer than necessary. If you like hearing your own voice,

take up public speaking.

9. Here, use your intuition to gauge how your answer if affecting the customer. If he or she

is convinced “shut-up”, if he or she isn’t convinced, quickly change tact.

10. Finally prepare yourself thoroughly to deal with objections, remember you are a

samurai, ready to repel any moves against you.

Techniques and Methods to deal with Objections

There are a number of techniques or methods that can be used to deal with objections and

which one you utilize will depend upon your intuition in deciding which is most appropriate.

1. The preventative method: Prepare your presentation in a way that the customer doesn’t

feel any need to bring up any matters.

2. The “yes but” method: Agree with the customer as much as possible, however groveling

is totally ineffective. People don’t like to buy from wimps.

3. The boomerang method: see if you can turn around the objection to favour your

arguments. Use any objections as starting points that can lead to closing the sale.

4. The deferring method: defer any answers until there is a more stable moment when

both of you are settled into a real dialogue. Deferring any answers also gives you more

time to find the most appropriate answer. If you don’t understand the objection, ask the

customer to repeat it or even give a better example. If the customer is forced to put the

objection in more concrete terms, he or she may even withdraw it.

5. Agreement and compensation: where any objections are justified, there is little point in

denying it. You can gain in the whole argument by admitting the customer is right but at

the same time pointing out that this is of little importance.

6. Repeating the objection and dampening it down: it’s so difficult to deal with

exaggerated objections, so repeat it in a much milder form and then answer it.

7. Combing several objections: most objections can be greatly weakened if they are all

answered together.

Building up Your Sales Skills and Intuition

Many new entrepreneurs believe that they have little experience in sales and fear this aspect of

the start-up, when in actual fact sales can be the most exciting and fulfilling part of the business

your operate. Meeting new people from all different walks of life should be an enriching rather

than draining experience. Don’t worry too much that some people (actually very few) seem to

get up on the wrong side of the bed and take their anxieties out on unsuspecting people like

you.

The sales process is just like a school play. Practice makes perfect. The more you practice the

sales process the easier it will become and most importantly you can develop your sense of

intuition which will become your best friend during any sales presentation. This is why I made

the analogy with a sportsperson or samurai. Things happen so fast as there is often little time to

think and your intuition takes over. There are three things you can do to build up your sales

skills and intuition.

1. Learn all your product information thoroughly by heart if possible so this issue is one

less thing to worry about during the sales presentation. Practicing in front of the mirror,

family or employees is a good way to do this. Practice until you don’t have to think

about what you are saying. Remember to maintain the passion about the product in

your spiel, as passion is contagious.

2. Learn all the possible objections that can be made about your products and the

potential answers that can be made to neutralize them. This is best done in a group as a

brainstorming session where everybody comes up with potential objections which you

can list down and work out multiple answers to them. After a few sales calls it will

become evident which objections are important and which aren’t.

3. Role play the sales process using different customer styles and objections to practice

your techniques and develop you basis intuition about what will happen and how to

best respond. The more you role play, the more experience you develop. Role play can

also be used as a review tool of problems and situations that occurred in the

marketplace, so that in the event of particular objections coming up again, you are

prepared. If your role plays can be reviewed by camcorder by a group, role playing will

be a much more powerful medium of learning.

When you have undertaken the above steps you will feel like an elite athlete, samurai or fully

capable combat troop ready for any selling situation in the marketplace. You will begin to enjoy

the sales aspects of your business with the new confidence and focused intuition you have

developed, and never be alone again in a sales interview.

Summary

• It is not the idea, product, service, or event that is important, selling it is.

• In the majority of cases, start-ups are about sales and not much else.

• Sales has a systematic process with a number of steps involved, that if learned and

approached correctly will greatly enhance your sales abilities.

• Many sales are lost through simple mistakes.

• Customers generally have little interest in new products, so effort is needed to sell

them.

• Empathy is very important in the art of sales to guide you.

• The sales presentation usually goes so fast that you can only rely on intuitive thinking to

respond to the customer and progress through the interview.

• Customer objections are a necessary part of the sales process. Very few sales will occur

without any objections.

• Practice will dramatically improve your sales skills.

Some More Intuition and Sales Tips:

• To develop your empathy skills watch movies and try and sketch out the characters

personality traits, motivations, and the thinking behind their behavior. You will find how

much it will improve your empathy with others.

Chapter Seven

This chapter looks at the times when watershed decisions are required to be made that will

affect the future direction of the venture. The concept of entrepreneurial chess is introduced

where the consequences of your future moves can be thought out beforehand.

Intuition and Growth

From time to time opportunities may emerge that have potential to change the whole nature of

the business and propel it to a much higher growth plain far in excess of where naturally

occurring growth would take you. You may have spotted a golden opportunity, but golden

opportunities have their price. These opportunities or forks in the road present clear choices

that require following distinctive and different tracks from what may have been originally

envisaged by the entrepreneur during the initial conception of the enterprise. Further these are

not choice paths that one can follow in any incrementally ad hoc way through trial and error

and retreat if you don’t like it. The decision may require the additional injection of capital, a

massive leasing agreement on a new piece of equipment like in the printing industry where

new printing presses can cost more than a million dollars, the move to a new and larger

premise which may require a hefty lease commitment, and/or the addition of new equity

partners. Therefore a definite and definitive decision is required.

The path you eventually take may be dependent upon your personal objectives, ambitions, and

vision. However you may not have much of a choice because failing to take the opportunity, like

upgrade on printing equipment to take on new business available may leave you in an

uneconomical and declining segment of the market where the firm may not be able to survive

indefinitely. You may be happy where you are but can’t afford to ignore what is occurring in the

competitive environment. These decisions may mean survival in the long term, so the stakes in

these decisions are important and the process of making these decisions can be agonizing,

stressful, torturous, worrisome, and again a matter of intuitive contemplation.

Growth forces decisions and decisions require thinking about what possible factors lay ahead

for the firm. Since making decisions about future paths requires deep commitments, risk, and

no doubt hard work, various options must be considered carefully.

One way to mentally look at different scenarios is through what I call playing entrepreneurial

chess. Entrepreneurial chess is just like playing a game of chess in the mind. There are pieces

which represent yourself and different players on the board. The board represents the

environment and market that you are operating within. During the game each piece has a

different value, just like a chess game which is representative of your product, resources,

capabilities, and networks compared to others, giving you specific advantages or disadvantages

which play out on the board. Mentally you can imagine yourself on the chess field and ask

yourself what will be the effect of your move?, what will the other players do?, etc. Just like a

game of chess.

Figure 7.1. The Entrepreneurial Chess Board

Through entrepreneurial chess you can see whether your strengths give you advantages vis-á-

vis others. How can competitors frustrate you? Where are you free to move? Where are you

restricted? This helps you turn your mind into the mind of the strategist.

For example, if you want to launch a range of children’s clothing that are imported from China,

what would you do;

Who are the competitors?

What are your competitors’ positions?

Where are you positioned?

Where can you move?

What are the risks?

What will your competitors do if you come into the game?

Your Moves

Your

Competitor’s

Moves

Your advantages &

Disadvantages

Entrepreneurial chess can be played on a local, national or international scale. It’s a tool to aid

you in thinking out different scenarios for expansion of your venture. This is the way many

entrepreneurs think and it helps you to identify the issues for closer consideration and run

through different scenarios quickly in your mind. Entrepreneurial chess is a good way of sizing

up your chances of success if certain moves are made.

Running mental scenarios is important in seeing the potential consequences of each

contemplated part of growth and harnessing your powerful intuition to play out strategic

games which help you understand the consequences of your potential actions much more

clearly. This doesn’t require super intelligence, but just training your intuition to look in all

directions before you cross the road.

Summary

• The entrepreneur will face necessary monumental decisions about the future direction

of the venture from time to time.

• Sometime these new directions must be taken for the survival of the firm.

• One way to assess the consequences of any potential move is to think like a chess game

and consider the consequences of any potential move before making it.

Some More Intuition and growth Tips:

• Run back through some decisions you have made in the past and re-look at the potential

options you had at the time and the consequences. This will help you understand the

method for when the next major decision comes up.

Chapter Eight

Firms go through a crisis at some point of time even with the most diligent management.

Getting out of these problems is not easy using reasoning as reasoning may even tell you to give

up. An entrepreneur must be able to see different perspectives and use intuition in these

circumstances. A crisis may also bring emotional trauma to an entrepreneur where his or her

intuition shuts down. Personal crisis management strategies to return unbiased intuition to the

entrepreneur are discussed.

Intuition and Keeping (or getting) Out of Trouble

One of the major potential occupational risks of being an entrepreneur is going through some

form of crisis. This may be some form of crunch like the loss of a major customer, cash-flow

problems brought on by over commitments or shorts falls in collection, or the loss of business

through the defection of employees to rivals. These crises could even bring your venture to the

verge of bankruptcy and is so common in the territory of entrepreneurship.

It sounds easy to keep out of these sorts of problems by checking on your daily cash-flow,

making commitments carefully, keeping inventory levels low, having a diverse portfolio of

customers, etc., that keeps balance. However it is human nature to want to trade higher than

one can really afford to, make commitments that may strain finances for a short period of time

in the belief that this short fall can be made up by doing this or that. But the reality is we all fall

into some form of crisis or another because of our poor judgments, or events that we didn’t

foresee. Looking at this in reverse however, we find that our judgment is poor only in a small

number of decisions and in actual fact most of the time prudent decisions have been made.

Most of the time intuition and gut feel gets us by, but those poor decisions are the result of

what we discussed back in chapter four the over influence of our ego on the decisions we

make. We always want to make that extra sale because it feels good, when we may know that

this may require buying more stock which may strain the cash position.

Getting out of these problems is just as much a matter of intuition as it is about management.

In fact the reasoning of management might convince you that it’s a lost case and time to give

up and pack up. I remember back in the mid 1970s in the family business when it had

overcommitted its spending and the banks wouldn’t support the overdraft any longer. One of

the most notorious financial administrators were with the board in the meeting room advising

them to appoint an administrator to wind up the company. Most of the grim faced family was

resigned to this destiny until my uncle who was chairman at the time stood up and said “this

company will wind up over my dead body.” This battle cry rallied the others who fought off the

attempt of the financial administrator to put the company into receivership. A few years later

the company doubled its size and was floated on the Melbourne Stock Exchange. Sometimes its

intuitive acts like this that acheive great things. They will never happen through analytic

thinking and reasoning, only through intuitive action and taking the challenge. Billy Ocean’s

“When the going gets tough, the tough get going” is a true acumen for entrepreneurs.

Another example of getting into trouble, this time through reasoning was the launch of new

coke in 1985. The Coca Cola executives back in the 1980s were watching Pepsi gain market

share and then worked on a plan to revamp the coke taste to fight back. After strenuous

market research including numerous focus group taste tests which all showed that consumers

preferred the taste of New Coke, the Coca Cola executives made the reasoned decision of

replacing the old formula with the new formula, expecting great success. The Coca Cola

Company faced the largest consumer backlash of any company in corporate history and had to

reintroduce the original taste 3 months after the New Coke launch. The New Coke fiasco is a

clear case of following reasoning over intuition. The Coke executives failed to feel the strong

emotional bond of consumers with the Classic flavor, which no research would show out.

Nothing looks the same from different perspectives, even something as simple as a vase of

flowers. So if a vase of flowers doesn’t look the same from different perspectives, complex

situations must have a multitude of different perspectives. Good decision making is based upon

finding and understanding multiple perspectives about a problem. Then intuition and reasoning

can be merged into one decision making process. Had the Coca Cola executives been able to

see other perspectives, their decision to launch New Coke may have been different.

Figure 8.1. A vase with flowers will look different from different perspectives

One way to make decisions in a crisis marrying both reasoning and intuition together is by the

use of lists to separate information, thoughts, ideas, and feelings, so the situation can be looked

at from different perspectives. This helps to break down the restricted frames we are thinking

through. For example one may create a list of factual information, another list recording the

risks and dangers, another looking at the positive aspects, another looking at alternatives, and

another list recording what the consequences of any action would be. This approach to thinking

was made famous by Edward De Bono’s six hats, which many of you may be familiar with.

However remember with the use of lists or the six hats methods, they will not make a decision

for you. As we have seen intuition and reasoning are often in conflict and this is necessary to

resolve any crisis. For example a man who loves two women may put the good and bad points

of both his loves on paper and find that the positive attributes of one of his loves comes out on

top of the other. Rationally he should chose this person, but he chose the other one, deciding

not to follow the reasoning the lists enabled him to see. But a decision is forced – for better or

worse.

Figure 8.2. Lists help a person to remember and prompt further intuition

When something drastically goes wrong like a customer asks you to hold onto the cheque that

you want to bank to meet your own commitments, a trusted employee resigns suddenly, or you

lose a major customer, emotions like anger, despair, confusion, disappointment, or anguish

start to take control of your thinking. Intuition is shut down as your mind is absorbed in an

emotional state. There is very little chance that anybody can come up with possible solutions

that are not just emotionally influenced reactions. One way to return to a less stressful state

that will allow intuition to return is to try and get yourself into a more emotionally stable state.

The best advice is that given by Julie Andrews in the movie The Sound of Music singing My

Favourite Things. “when the dog bites, when the bee stings, when I’m feeling sad, I simply

remember my favourite things and then I don’t feel so sad.” It works, but getting there requires

disciplined thinking. What works for me, may not work for you, but get away from your office

and do something you like. Force yourself to not think about it, no matter how hard it is, until a

change in mood occurs. Usually with the time lapse, the change of mood, your intuition may

begin to kick in again with some suggestions free of the emotion of hate, spite, anger, revenge,

etc, things we may all feel when we are betrayed. Once again, it isn’t easy and I particularly

sympathize with type “A” personality types. The amazing thing about crisis is that life goes on

regardless, and in most cases we become stronger after the experience, and wiser.

Major life decisions no matter how hard we try cannot be rationalized, only be made intuitively.

All crises can be evaluated but an intuitive decision made. Remember firms rarely survive on

rational decisions; otherwise Disneyland would have never been created in Florida many years

ago by Walt Disney.

Summary

• All firms go through crisis from time to time.

• Logic is usually not very helpful in getting out of many problems.

• An entrepreneur must learn how to see different perspectives of situations in order to

avoid getting into a crisis.

• A crisis usually creates emotional trauma for the entrepreneur where his or her intuition

shuts down.

• The entrepreneur must learn how to get free of the emotional stress so clear intuitive

decisions can be made.

Some More Intuition and Keeping (or getting) Out of Trouble Tips

• Go and re-read one of your old school novels. Pick out some of the main characters and

look at the emotions behind what they did.

Chapter Nine

This chapter concludes this book with a summary and final advice to the reader.

Intuition and Success

We have seen that it is intuition that makes things happen and analytical reasoning can actually

bog people down into reasoning paralysis that delay or even prevents people from taking any

action upon opportunities they have found – a matter of letting good opportunities just slip

through the fingers. We have also seen that people who make decisions based on their intuition

rather than reason and analysis are more likely to succeed in their endeavours.

Although intuition can speed up decision making dramatically and promote action orientated

entrepreneurship, there are always dangers that our intuition can be hijacked by our biases. We

have already seen that reasoning can be in conflict with our intuition and our ego can be

confused with our intuition. Besides these influences our mind is programmed with sets of

beliefs that are called heuristics. Some heuristics assist in decision making but others introduce

bias, create misconceptions, fallacies and abstract inferences. It is misguided beliefs that distort

the balance of our intuition and hinder our reasoning, intuition, and finally judgments.

For example, we may selectively look for evidence that supports our beliefs, see patterns and

trends that don’t really exist, rely on irrelevant pieces of information, or make attributions

about something based on past performance, i.e., just because we have been successful in the

past we believe that we will be successful in the future, which is inclined to develop complacency

within us. There are so many different types of cognitive biases that can cause shortcomings in

our sense of intuition.

When you drive down the road of uncertainty, which is especially the case with opportunities

that we construct, shaping and molding our responses as we go along, our intuition is the only

voice that we can trust. As we see in many Hollywood films dramatizing dramas where the

President of the United States must make some important decision, the President obtains a

host of opinions before making up his own mind, where the full responsibility rests with him.

You are the president of your own venture, the person with everything at stake where those

advising around you have little vested interest and sense of responsibility. It can be very lonely

and even frightening making venture decisions, especially when you are new at it. However

with balanced intuition one is able to consider the issues holistically and sub-consciously in a

way that your conscious self may not consider, generating a feeling, tendency to favour, an

urge to go in a certain direction that will appear after some incubation, giving you that insight

you need about how to handle a particular issue.

What we have also seen is that intuition is closely connected to our sense of personal mastery.

Sound intuition develops within us within the specific domain that we are involved in during our

working life, just as with practice we get better at skating, horse riding, bicycle riding, or driving

a car. We just have to make sure that we maintain an open mindedness about learning, seeking

a diversity of experiences, and improve upon our domain knowledge over our areas of interest

and beyond. Finally we have to maintain our awareness and sensitivity (which ebbs and flows

over time) that influences how and what we perceive, enabling us to take multiple perspectives

and enrich our thinking.

Remember all the major decisions you have taken in your life have been intuitive decisions, and

in most cases have served you well. The things you regret show a sign of learning, but the other

advantage of intuition is that it helps you adapt to these regretful situations and changes within

the environment as well. Intuition is a good adaptive mechanism for your life journey. In this

way intuition will help you make big leaps forward in your life that some of you will be thankful

for. For others not satisfied, it may not have been that the intuition was wrong, but

circumstances changed. Not understanding the characteristics of our intuition can hold us back

in life.

Remember that intuition can be unreliable when our ego is strong and camouflages itself and

influences us towards our emotional weaknesses rather than our strengths. Always search to

see where our ego is. If you have to write down your thoughts on lists so you can see the

emotionally influenced ego thoughts, this would be time well spent. Maybe your ego also

carries many good aspirations, but at other times it may encourage you to over-extend yourself

which may lead to disaster down the road. Remember no ego at all will result in a lack of

personal drive to achieve anything – so ego is also a necessary part of the entrepreneurial

journey.

Intuition is closely linked with creativity which is what the large multinational firms want within

their organizations. Yes the trend in organizations is towards less analysis and more creativity,

where people are trained to explore their own intuition to access greater creativity and

imagination.

Remember don’t blindly trust your intuition, it is only as good as your personal experiences and

ability to learn. Don’t get trapped into thinking that intuition comes from some divine source.

This is a belief that may lead to devastating consequences.

Fate and luck are not random events as we generally believe. Being in the right place at the

right time is not coincidental – it’s an urban myth. Without having your life experience and

knowledge that you have learned throughout your life and the associated wisdom of your

intuition, you will not see any opportunity in the first place. Thus fate is tied up with our

knowledge and experience. As the old saying goes;

There are three types of people; those who make things happen, those who see things happen,

and those who wondered what happened.

Intuition gives you both the perception to see what is happening and the energy to make things

happen as well. Without strong intuition you will always be wondering what happened.

Intuition helps you see that the proverbial glass in new ways;

”An Optimist Sees the Glass as Half-Full, A Pessimist Sees the World as Half-Empty.” “There are

people who always see the glass as completely full, even though it isn’t. On the flipside, there

are also people who see the glass as half-empty, dirty, filled with germs, possibly made from

contaminated lead glass from China. The engineer sees the glass as twice as big as it needs to

be, but the entrepreneur sees the glass as undervalued by half its potential.”

The author has taken you through some of the areas within a business venture intuition can be

of great value. In addition the author has given you a number of tools that will prove of

immense value during your entrepreneurial journey in life. These are;

• The condition of mindfulness which helps you obtain emotion free thoughts that will

enhance your perception of what is happening in the environment. Mindfulness can be

enhanced in the person through the practice of meditation and bring a much calmer

demeanor to the self and generally lower stress levels as well.

• The idea of concept extraction which can assist you develop ideas into business models

through the art of construction.

• Seeing the big picture which helps you holistically evaluate all the aspects of an idea to

determine whether an opportunity exists.

• Creating your place in the market through going along a stepped path from the

opportunity, back through the necessary strategies to exploit it, required networks,

skills, and resources to support your strategy and your necessary goals that need to be

set.

• Developing you sales skills through role playing and learning how to empathize and read

your customers emotions about your sales presentation.

• How to play entrepreneurial chess so you can see the consequences of your actions and

possible responses by your competitors, and

• The advantages of using different lists to group ideas and information under within

various thought frames like “factual information”, “aspirations”, “consequences”, etc.

Intuition can take you to a direct conclusion which later reasoning can confirm what you

have already concluded. If this combination of intuitive reasoning can be empowered in

your decision making, then true wisdom and personal mastery has been achieved.

Remember these simple intuition building tools you have learnt that can assist you through

your entrepreneurial journey in life. Remember, “There are two kinds of failures in life,

those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought” – Dr. Laurence J.

Peter – Author of The Peter Principle. I hope with this advice that you will now be able to

harness your intuition to assist you in your future journey of life and enterprise.

Intuition is what makes things happen, not analysis – so throw away you’re the thinking

rigidity that you learnt during your degree, some of the most successful entrepreneurs have

come from the school of hard knocks and got through on their intuition.

Summary

• Intuition as a thinking style speeds up decision making.

• We must be aware of potential biases that may distort our intuition.

• You as an entrepreneur must take full responsibility for your decisions and intuition is

your best thinking tool.

• Most major decisions you take in life are intuitive.

• Intuition is closely connected to your personal mastery.

• Don’t blindly trust your intuition – it’s only as good as your knowledge and experience –

remember it took you some time to learn to drive a car.

• Fate and luck are not coincidental.

• Intuition helps the entrepreneur see things in new perspectives when you have

mastered it.

• Intuition can lead you to direct conclusions; reasoning can confirm your conclusion was

right.

Some More Intuition and Success Tips:

• Learn how to do meditation and try to do some everyday to relax and gain access to

your default neural networks. With practice and some correct technique you will find

that ideas and insights will start to flow like water. In addition to bringing new ideas and

perspectives to the forefront, meditation also greatly assists in lowering stress and can

even if practiced regularly lower blood pressure. Again I sympathize with type “A”

personalities who will be skeptical and find it very difficult to get into this routine.

• Another way of relaxing and opening up the paths of intuition is to take up some form of

daily exercise like walking, running, cycling, swimming, or even playing golf by yourself.

The art of exercise allows you to concentrate on the exercise take in new stimuli from

the environment where you will be surprised how many new thoughts and perspectives

come into your mind.

• More on lists: Keep a white board in your office, kitchen or where you spend a lot of

time, or carry a little dairy. Whenever a though comes into your mind, write it down.

You will be very surprised how many thoughts you forget. The act of writing down

thoughts somehow helps your mind focus on the idea and most often further

elaboration on it will come over time.