Can intuition make you a better investor? Hosted by Ben Fraser, guest Sunil Godse reveals how experiential, relational, situational, and creative intuition shape smart decisions and prevent costly mistakes. Tune in for practical insights on intuitive investing.
Connect with Ben Fraser on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/benwfraser/
Connect with Sunil Godse on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/sunilgodse/
Invest Like a Billionaire podcast is sponsored by Aspen Funds which focuses on macro-driven alternative investments for accredited investors. https://aspenfunds.us/
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Transcription
Introduction to Intuitive Branding
Sunil Godse: Your intuition is never wrong. Your intuition actually starts working in as little as 33 milliseconds.
Ben Fraser: How does this apply to a business owner?
Sunil Godse: I’ve got a five step process called intuitive branding. The first of the five steps is what I do is I look at your past good and bad business decisions, and I get you to understand what the four types of intuition are and strengthen them.
Once you strengthen all four, then you take that into a leadership role and say, okay. If you want to scale your business, you have to have a brand story where you have a vision, you’ve got a mission, and you’ve got core values that employees can intuitively want to join you when they resonate with what you’re trying to do as a business, then you make sure that they’re set up for success and now you’ve deepened their trust.
Steps four and five focus on the customer to say, where’s your messaging? And the messaging has to touch all four types of intuition that attracts them to the brand. And then the fifth step is expanding your products and services that intuitively align with what you have. And then they’re going to buy more when they trust your brand.
They buy more, even if those services are priced higher and there’s your revenues.
Podcast Introduction and Guest Overview
Ben Fraser: Hello, Future Billionaires! Welcome back to another episode of your favorite podcast. Got a really interesting episode today. This one was really fun for me. Brought on a guest. His name is Sunil Godse and he is an intuition expert.
I don’t know what that is, but you’ll find out. And what he talks about is using intuition to help make better decisions. All the time, we’re getting these signals from our intuition, I call it a gut feeling. These are signals that our brain and our body are trying to send to us to help us make better decisions.
And so he takes his framework that he’s built out, he’s established four different types of intuition that we receive, and uses these signals to make better decisions when investing. And what I’ve found so many times in talking with investors is when doing due diligence and figuring out who to work with and who to invest with, it’s so easy for difficult to get to that trust level, right?
How do you actually know if these people are trustworthy and what is my intuition saying? A lot of times people stuff down the intuition or the gut feeling because they think it’s not legit. It’s not real. It’s just my emotions or whatever. But he actually says there are over 120, 000 Studies and research papers on this area of intuition over the past few years, way more than I thought as becoming a more well understood area of science.
And so I think I’m really gonna enjoy this. He really brings some great golden nuggets on one of the four types of intuition, how to make sure and how to use intuition against your inherent biases, cognitive biases that we have. And also how to use intuition to spot positive schemes. Oh man, this is really good stuff.
So be sure to check out this episode. You’re going to love it. Let’s do the whole thing. It’s a really good episode. Thanks so much.
This is the Invest Like a Billionaire podcast, where we uncover the alternative investments and strategies that billionaires use to grow wealth. The tools and tactics you’ll learn from this podcast will make you a better investor. And help you build legacy wealth. Join us as we dive into the world of alternative investments, uncover strategies of the ultra wealthy, discuss economics and interview successful investors.
Welcome back to another episode of the Invest Like a Billionaire podcast. I’m your host Ben Fraser, and today I’m bringing on a very exciting guest. His name is Sunil Godse and very excited to have him on and talk about intuition. And the science behind it, how to make decisions, how to improve your decision making.
And you might think, what does that have to do with investing? From my perspective, it has a lot to do with investing. Because what I’ve found and talking with a lot of investors and myself included we. Are attracted to the potential that we see in the investment opportunities that we’re looking at in the private alternative space.
But one of the biggest challenges is lack of transparency and trust, being able to understand how we can have confidence in our decision making. Big factor of trust and intuition. And so Neil, super glad to have you on the show. Really excited to break this down. I think it’s gonna be really helpful for our listeners.
Sunil Godse’s Journey and Early Ventures
Ben Fraser: So give us a little bit of your background and what kind of got you into this whole area of intuition and decision making and what you do now.
Sunil Godse: Yeah, absolutely. So for those who are watching or those listening can’t see I’m South Asian. And so typically when you come from a South Asian family my dad used to say, you can pick any career that you want, as long as it’s doctor, lawyer, engineer, man, so I think door number three.
And I always had this feeling that it just wasn’t the career path for me. And this, and we all have this sort of, everybody talks about this gut feeling. And it was just gnawing at me saying, you’re not supposed to be an engineer. In fact, you’re probably best suited to be an entrepreneur. And the biggest, best piece of evidence is when I was five years old I raised $200 for some video games that my dad thought were too expensive.
I remember this voice telling me, so Neil, you got to go door to raise money, and that’s what I did. And that’s how I raised 200 and 100 went to my dad. He was shocked. I wondered, look, where did you get this? And the other 100 went to charity. And throughout my whole life it’s been very entrepreneurial.
I bit the East Indian bullet and became an engineer. And three years in there at the three year market in Canada, there’s a point where you get a license. And so if you’re going to say yes you’re an engineer for life. And in my case I told my dad, no, I’m going to be an entrepreneur.
And I never spoke to him for 12 years after that. Wow. Yeah. And, but the very, very first venture that I got into was a Mexican restaurant chain. And we brought a big fancy chain up to Canada. And it was called senior fraud by a big Mexican restaurant chain. It was the first one in Canada and we’re making two and a half million my first year four and a half, third year 12 million the third sorry, third year, second year, four and a half.
And then I bought out, we expanded to Las Vegas and Edmonton, and then I started moving onto some of my own ventures with a wholesale clothing company, retail clothing company pop up event company, event company, raised about 20, made about 20 million in revenues, and then started working with some of the bigger companies like Citibank, Rogers Wireless up in Canada.
- A. P., Western Digital, some of the bigger sort of tech focused companies. And so I had this sort of entrepreneurial spirit, and I had the, you saw the big Fortune 50 and I found my sweet spot, intuitively, by right in the middle, where I’ve got people who own businesses that are At about 500, 000 to a million, and they’re looking to get to the next level.
And so that kind of got me to really understand what this thing was, that gut feeling that I wasted a career in doing this. And I think one of the pinnacle moments is when I was reflecting back to the times I ignored that gut feeling. Obviously, one was my career.
Another time I went down to work for another tech company. And my intuition is gnawing at me saying you shouldn’t be going. The contract terms are changing. And sure enough, I ignored that there was that signal that I ignored. We’ll talk about intuitive signals. That was very unique. And I said, don’t go.
And I went and the company never paid me. And I came back to Canada with 23 cents in my bank account. And perhaps the biggest one that got me to really shift my focus to say, I really need to study this. As I had a friend of mine and I was, when I was in engineering, I was doing some coaching.
And she was desperately trying to get my attention because there was someone stalking her. And she wanted my advice on how to get, how to deal with this guy. And again, I had this, it was a different signal altogether than the ones I heard before. And I ignored it. And, I just said, I need to go and have some beers with my friend.
Can we meet maybe a couple of days later? And she being the good friend she was, she says, yeah, absolutely. Let’s meet a couple of friends later, a couple of days later. And the very next day she was shot and killed by that guy. And I just said, there’s no way I’m going to ever let this happen again.
And so I really need to take a deep dive. into understanding, okay, why did I ignore my gut feeling? What were these signals that kept changing? Everybody talks about gut feeling, but that didn’t happen for me. I had a voice, the back of the hairs on my neck stood up. I’d lose my peripheral vision.
Why is it so unique and why am I the only one sharing these signals? And when I trust those signals I get into ventures, my personal life becomes much happier. So there’s a huge correlation to trusting these signals that intuition sends you and ignoring them. And so that got me down a deep hole in first of all, learning about failure and why do businesses fail?
Because I had a really big problem. Entrepreneurial band. So I said, why do people in, in, in business fail? And so that got me writing my first book called fail fast, succeed faster. And when I went back to the audio recordings cause I thought it was all about stories of failure. And if I give stories of failure, people will want to, they’ll be able to succeed faster.
And going back to the audio recordings, 80 to 90 percent of them said I ignored my intuition. And I said, wow, what is this thing called?
Ben Fraser: Interesting. Yeah.
The Science and Signals of Intuition
Sunil Godse: And when I looked at the science, I looked up, there’s over 120, 000 research articles on intuition. And I took a deep dive into it, and looked at some MRI studies.
And what I realized is that your intuition is never wrong. And it’s in the subconscious area of your brain which is called the limbic system. And it, not only is it consists of four different types, which is even more complex it’s divided into positive signals. Which tells us to go ahead with the decision and negative signals, which tell us that warn us to take a step back at each one of these signals is unique to each one of us because your experiences are different from mine.
So the way your signals pop up is going to be very different from mine. So if I hear a voice, it could be, when making a marketing decision, you may also hear a voice, but it could be when dealing with your family. So even though it’s the same signal, it’s different situations. And one of the key pieces of information that I found out is that your intuition actually starts working in as little as 33 milliseconds.
So when you’re about to make, in this case, it’s an investment decision, but considering a real estate deal or a hedge fund or any other kind of investment vehicle, your intuition starts milliseconds to see, okay, let’s take that investment Risk or that portfolio or whatever that investment vehicle is.
We’re going to filter that through the four types of intuition. And based on what each one of the four types of intuition comes back and evaluates and we’ll get into what those four types, what, how they evaluate it from what perspective they look at, it’s going to send you each one of those four are going to send you a positive signal.
Say, yep, this is right for you or a negative signal saying this is not the right vehicle for you. And that happens within 10 to 14 seconds. So between 33 milliseconds and 10 to 14 seconds, you have a pretty good idea that this investment is worth at least taking a look at. And then there’s always, it’s like a camera, on, let’s say, so your intuition is always looking so if someone who is managing the fund the portfolio changes, or there’s something that the words don’t match the actions, or the investments inside change and shifts, and you’re not really happy with it, or the real estate risk changes because maybe the interest rate changes, That changes your risk profile or your risk ratio.
And one of those four types of intuition is going to evaluate that and say, okay, is this still right for you? And then it’s going to send you a positive signal and say, yeah. Just because the interest rate changed, it’s still a good investment for you or no, that 1. 5 percent increase in percentage, that’s a bit too risky.
And then one of the four types is going to say, no, I think you better back up. And the problem is if you don’t know what your signals are. You’re going to ignore it. And now you’re down a path where you’re making a series of bad decisions. And when it comes to investment, that’s where you lose your money.
Ben Fraser: Man, that’s so crazy. So you hear the first impressions are really important, but you’re saying it, it happens way faster than anybody even thinks. What was one of the stats you mentioned, which was shocking to me and was actually going to be one of the questions is, how much science or studies have there been around this area?
Because we all have heard of that gut feeling. We’ve heard the concept of intuition. We all experience it, right? Because we said earlier, it could be a physiological response, right? The hair stands up back on your neck and the goosebumps, like hearing those voices, those kinds of subconscious and just those feelings, right?
Like the overarching I don’t get a good feeling about this. So we all know what that is, but it is, it seems like pseudoscience or it seems like, Oh, that’s, that’s just, I ate something weird for lunch. But you’re saying there’s 120, 000 studies on this, why haven’t we heard of this more?
This is shocking to me because it’s. It’s something everyone experiences and there’s obviously a lot of science and things around it, but I haven’t heard much about that. What’s the, what’s going on?
Sunil Godse: Yeah, so there’s a lot more research now, so a lot of that research was not really mainstream.
And in fact, even when I looked at it back in, when I was writing my second book, Gut, which looks more at the scientific part of it back then when I started my research, which is 2012. A lot of the stuff around then was, woo and, manifestation and that was where a lot of the intuition was coming from.
And, certainly if you believe in manifestation and if you believe, it comes from voices from God or signals from the universe. To me, it doesn’t matter how you define it. My job is to say, okay, you recognize that there are signals. You can define how you are, where it’s coming from.
That’s not my job to define that for you. It’s your experience. My job is to tell you not to ignore that. And in fact, my, one of my very first interviewees, For the intuition and my gut book and the whole project on intuitive branding, which I’ve now ventured into. This was a friend of mine who is an investment banker.
And I sat down with him and I said I talked about intuition and said, come on, intuition doesn’t exist. What are you talking about? And so I said, I listen, I’m doing this. Please give me some time. He said, okay, I’ll give you an hour. We’ll talk about this. This we’ll stop for about five minutes and then we’ll just catch up, the latte.
And he said, Oh, great. This is going to go well. So I sat down, I turned on the cameras and he’s really struggling to try and introduce the concept of intuition in the video. I think I’m not sure. Perhaps. And, we had some people who had some unique signals like ears getting hot and someone seeing omens behind his right shoulder.
These are CEOs running multimillion dollar firms. And he says, yeah, I wish I could meet those people, but that’s not how it works. But as I’m educating him on the four types of intuition, what they actually mean, it resonates with him. And he says, yeah you know what? I do remember that feeling when this happened and what that happened.
And yeah, perhaps it is intuition. And at the very end, the last, very last story he talks about, In that interview is that this guy was making probably three to $4 million as an investment banker, and he said, intuition, now he’s using intuition. Said intuition told me that it’s just right. This is the time.
And he traded that all away to run a tiny, almost bankrupt little restaurant. That restaurant that he started happened to be East Side Mario’s location number one, and he grew that from zero to over $2 billion from one location to over a thousand. And before he retired 20 years later, and he said, it’s all based on, it just felt right, which is a signal.
It felt right. It’s costing three to 4 million away to run something bankrupt because it felt right. That’s the power of intuition when you believe in it.
Ben Fraser: It’s so interesting. Cause I’ve told investors all the time and I’ve tried to create Education around. How do you make better decisions?
How do you do better vetting, and do better diligence? But one of the things I’ve said, and honestly, without really knowing the science, but just from my own experience is I’ve said, I think most people underestimate their gut instincts, right? Your gut instincts are very powerful in this because there’s an element of trust.
That is involved in all these decisions and the subconscious things you pick up in interactions and what you’re saying is ongoing review of every little data point that you’re trying to match. Is it coherent? Is it congruent? And that’s something that a lot of people I don’t think pay attention to.
And it’s interesting to hear you corroborate this a little bit, because it has been my experience as well. And, we can all chalk up to be different things and I’m a man of faith. So I probably think it might be different than someone else, but I think the, Experience of it is undeniable for a lot of people, but it’s, you want to just shove it down because you think it’s not important.
So talk a little bit about the four types.
Applying Intuition in Investment Decisions
Ben Fraser: You mentioned four types of intuition, break it down for us a little bit because I’ve got a lot of these and are really curious.
Sunil Godse: Yeah, absolutely. And I’ll, let’s pick we’ll look right at some, let’s say we’re looking at a real estate portfolio.
And let’s sit from that perspective and then we can choose that experience. This is actually right up the alley with the John McDonald John Rothschild, who tossed his career. So if you’re looking at a real estate portfolio, one of the first of the types of intuition is called experiential intuition.
What that looks like is that if you’re looking at investing in some kind of real estate or let’s say hedge fund as an example. It’s going to look at the experience that you’ve had in the past in investing in these types of strategies. So if you invested in real estate before and it could be, let’s say, single townhomes, and now you’re getting into a commercial A, B, or C grade, that’s a bit different.
So your experiential intuition is going to You’ve never invested in something like this before because you don’t have the experience. You better get someone you trust and get his or her opinion on that and whether it’s a good one or not. So that’s experiential intuition. And if you’re going to go ahead with that, you or somebody you trust has had to have experience saying this is a good investment.
The second one is called relational intuition. And this one is going to look at the people involved in that real estate deal. Who is, who’s heading it. Is it a corporation? Who told you about it? Did you go to a marketing seminar? And you’re all looking for trust clues and trust clues are things like body language, tone, watching words, match the actions.
And there’s seven there’s sort of seven body twitches, facial expressions that you can’t change. Even sociopaths can’t change. Your intuition is able to pick up on that. And when it picks up on that, it says, there’s something wrong here. I don’t believe what this guy’s saying. And that’s going to trigger a negative signal saying these guys can’t be trusted.
So what happens is when you get that first negative signal. It’s going to tell you to take a step back and reevaluate. So it doesn’t mean if you get a negative signal, it doesn’t mean that the deal is done, it’s just that you need more further evidence that you can trust the people involved. And if you can find that evidence, excellent, then that negative signal will turn into a positive one.
And then your relational intuition is saying, go ahead. So now you’ve got the experience, the people involved, the third is the situation. So the situation is where is that real estate located? Is it in a city that you’re familiar with? Do you know real estate? Location of where the interest rates are, what kind of square footage does it have?
Does it have traffic access? If it’s a commercial property, do you have end cap investors or real estate people? If it’s townhomes, what type of income level area is that in? What is the quality of the tenants? All those things are called situational intuition. It’s going to like the situation that real estate investment is in and see whether that’s a situation you want to get into.
So perhaps you want to get into real estate investment and you don’t like low income. Housing areas and if there’s something that pops up, that’s juicy, that somebody says it’s in this area, that’s what it’s low income, your situational integration is going to go, not sure. So for John Rothschild, when he grew East Side Mario’s, one of the primary areas they looked at was where are we going to put these restaurants?
So he’s looking at traffic patterns, he’s looking at future development and because that’s going to attract people to his locations. And McDonald’s does the same thing. McDonald’s is a real estate company. And so they look at the same thing. Traffic patterns that’s McDonald’s team using situational intuition to locate a McDonald’s or any other franchise location, if you’re doing it the proper way.
And then the last one is called creative intuition, and creative intuition looks at the risk level. Okay. And so if you’re looking at it, how risky is that investment? If I invest in it, do I take debt financing? Am I taking my savings out? How risky is that? And if you have a partner how risky is that for your partner?
And can you come to some kind of agreement if the interest rates are slated to rise? If we’re in a recession, if inflation is going to go up and you believe these kinds of things, it puts you in a more of a risky situation. Your creative intuition is going to let you know whether that risky situation is right for you, no matter what anybody else says, like my wife and I are two different people.
My wife is very less risky. I’m very risky for her. It may not make a really good business decision, but for the money I control, it’s a great decision. And I’ll get into that investment. And that’s why she has safer funds. I have more risky mining. I’m into more mining and high tech investments.
Whereas my kids are more into Boston pizza and Disney and all those kinds of things. That’s where creative intuition takes a look at that risk that some people are more risky and less risky, and that’s okay. But creative intuition says what’s the right level of risk for you.
So what’s the experience, who are the people involved, what’s the situation, that investment and what’s the risk level at all of those have to be positive for you to make that any one of them is negative. You got to back away to get more information. And if you cannot get information that satisfies that one particular intuitive type, you have to back away.
Ben Fraser: Interesting. So you mentioned within 33 milliseconds, you’re getting feedback and your body is taking in all this information, these four different areas. And it happens so fast. How do you have the awareness to take a step back and. Parse through. Okay. What am I feeling? What bucket is this?
I don’t feel good about something. Which bucket is it? Is there a process that you take to evaluate your own internal gut check of what’s going on to evaluate what I need more information on, right? Cause what you’re saying is it’s not necessarily a. Hard. No.
Because sometimes there’s more information needed and it’s more of a, it was a yellow flag here. Need to go do more investigating, do more research. But if you’re not in tune with that, maybe you don’t even know.
Sunil Godse: Yeah. So the easiest way to do this is to look at your past decisions that you made, where you made some good investments and where you’ve made some bad investments.
Creating a Framework for Intuitive Investment Decisions
Sunil Godse: Okay. And so on a sheet of paper, what you would do is across, at the very top, you can put what was the investment that was good and what was the investment that was bad. So you’d have two sheets of paper and you have four columns and each of the columns represents one of the types of intuition.
So if you look at your investment decision from an experiential intuition. Why did, why was that a good business investment for you? What was the experience behind it? And similarly, relational intuition. Why did you trust the people involved? Situational intuition. Why was that situation great for you?
And then risky creative intuition. Why was that risk level right for you?
Identifying Positive Intuitive Signals
Sunil Godse: And so when you think about each one of those columns, you’re going to sense a signal because those signals never go away. And so you, what you need to do is record that signal. And normally when it’s a positive intuitive signal, it feels like a flow.
There’s no resistance. So for me it’s a, like a really good, it’s a gentle pulling for me, the dots connect me, I feel calm and those are my positive signals. And when you take, when you actually go ahead with those decisions from each of the four types, they’ll send you even stronger or louder signals.
To confirm that you’re on the right track. So that’s a good decision. And that helps you not only understand the four types of intuition. Now you also understand your positive intuitive signals that are both subtle and louder. So that’s fantastic. And that’s usually step one.
Understanding Negative Intuitive Signals
Sunil Godse: Step two is you do the same thing for negative intuitive decisions.
And so you take a bad investment decision you had before. Same thing, four columns. And so now the thing with bad decisions is that. All four types of intuition do not have to send you the initial negative signal. So let’s say there’s one where you know, that same low income, high income scenario.
So let’s say I made a bad investment in the past because I went with a low income versus a high income. I’ll use that as an example. From my experiential intuition, I reinvested in real estate. So that’s great. So from an experiential intuition, positive signal. From a relational intuition perspective, the investment group’s the same.
I’ve dealt with them. I’ve had positive investments with them and made some great returns. Positive intuitive signal. Situational intuition says, hold on, this is low income and you wanted a sort of high income. That’s not part of your investment portfolio. Negative signal now from a creative intuition and saying the risk reward ratio is applying.
It’s okay. Positive signal. So now you’ve got one intuitive type sending you a negative signal. And when you actually go, when you went ahead with that, you probably, you might’ve had some bad tenants. You had, could have had some squatters. Perhaps the investment you thought was right. Wasn’t very good.
The vacancy rate all does a shot up. Whatever the case is, it ended up in a bad investment decision. All because you ignore your situational intuition. You need at least one of the four, sending you a negative signal. And so now what you’ve done is you’ve confirmed the positive signals, and now you’ve learned about your negative signals.
So when these signals pop up, the next time you make an investment. You know what your signals are and you know the prototypes of intuition. And so if you go through that process for any investment decision you make, again, within 33 milliseconds, you’ll know. And then what you do is let’s say with your situational intuition, where it gives you that negative signal.
The next step is to say, okay, how can I change that into a positive signal? So what you would have to do is, what is it, what’s stopping me from going from high income to low income? And if you can rationalize that and perhaps the opinions look good, the things on paper look good, I trust the things on paper.
There’s going to be some great development, maybe some high end restaurants are coming in that area. Perhaps there’s a new theater coming in that area. It’s going to bring some more middle income people towards that area. The situation changes in the future, then you might, that situational intuition will say, yeah, that makes sense now.
So perhaps it’s not so bad. And so perhaps the quality of the tenants will get better over time. Now you’ve changed that negative signal into a positive signal and you go ahead with that.
Ben Fraser: Yeah. Makes sense.
Sunil Godse: Yeah.
Balancing Emotions and Rationality in Decision Making
Sunil Godse: And so it’s really there’s the limbic system, which is your rationalism.
That’s your fight, flight, or fear. So anything you’ve done in the past, which is negative, it’s going to evaluate. And now you’re actually using logic and rationality because you have to use both head and heart limbic system, frontal lobe. That’s where the science is. You have to match the two.
And once they’re on board, that’s a great investment decision for you.
Ben Fraser: Interesting. So talk a little bit.
Navigating Biases in Intuitive Decisions
Ben Fraser: I want to tease out a little bit because you have, I’ve done a little bit of research and know we’re probably close to you on heuristics and biases, right? Cause we, the other kind of side of this is, We all have these inherent biases that are created because our brain has to create simple fact patterns for us to process all the information that we have.
But sometimes those biases might not be accurate, right? Because our brain is trying to create a shortcut. So examples are, recency bias. So we tend to overrate our more recent experiences. older experiences or survivorship bias. Like we only overweight the winners because they’re the only ones that survive.
So we don’t, we can’t contrast them against the losers. There are all these other kinds of biases that, that kind of come up. How do you sort through if a lot of these intuition and guts signals are based on a past experience? How do you make sure it’s not skewed? Signal from.
Maybe a bias that you have or how do you have awareness of that at least?
Sunil Godse: Yeah. So whenever you have any kind of bias, whether it’s recency bias, survivorship bias, those are very highly emotional types of decisions. And so those initiatives are based on, on, on high emotions. And what happens is when you make an emotional decision, you have not allowed the rational part the, the frontal lobe to come in and actually rationalize that.
So what happens is when you go through the process that I have, that I was just explaining Yeah. Give you a chance to really outline it and put it on paper and take a look at it from a very sort of 30, 000 foot view area so that the emotion is controlled. And when you control that emotion and you’ll know where you’re forcing a decision emotionally because you’re going to get a negative signal or you’re not going to get a positive signal.
So if you’ve done the work and figure out what your intuitive signals are. And the positive signals are just not showing up. There’s a bias there that you’re pushing a narrative, a personal narrative, and that’s going to get you in trouble.
Ben Fraser: So you’re actually saying your biases might not actually inform the intuition that could be in contrast with it.
And if you’re going along with your biases, you might actually have a gut intuition kind of pushing back against that because there’s an emotional element that you’re not confronting. Is that how you’re saying?
Sunil Godse: That’s one. And don’t forget, you’ve got four types of intuition all working together.
So even if you’re trying to mask one of the biases that, in let’s say experiential intuition, which is your recency bias, perhaps, or relational intuition, where you’re forcing yourself to trust an investment group, because perhaps you like the numbers on their marketing presentation.
Your creative intuition is going to be screaming at you saying, this is risky because there’s two other types of intuition giving you negative signals. You’re not listening to them. So I’m going to send you a negative signal. Say, listen, buddy, you better pack off. So that’s how they work in unison. And so you can have bias.
You can try and force yourself on one of the four, two of the four, even the three of the four, you can’t fool the fourth one ever.
Building Trust and Ongoing Intuition
Ben Fraser: So what about trust, right? So from my experience, a lot of times I can be getting good signals. I feel like, Hey, this feels right to move forward. But then you’re, as you said earlier, you’re always continuing to take in more information.
And maybe there’s an, a, the first kind of signals were good. Like the first impression was great. But then over time, some things start to be mismatched or what I’ve found too it’s difficult to. understand how people are going to react in a difficult situation. But to me, that’s the true revealing of character, right?
Is how someone acts when something’s difficult and that’s hard to do. And if you’re not in that experience to see how they actually act because sometimes people can put on a front that’s different than maybe their underlying character, or maybe they think they have that character, but they get into the situation and they don’t, the wrong decision or cowardly and whatever.
And so how do you reconcile maybe this initial intuition with kind of an ongoing intuition as things evolve and change and create a good feedback loop to make sure, you’re again, not using biases to just gloss over things that maybe are now becoming negative signals.
Sunil Godse: Yeah. So in that case, you just take that same, let’s say if it’s a person and whatever his or her actions are, take them to the force, same four types of intuition, right? So this is really tough, especially if you have a really close relationship, if you have a friend at work or a friend who’s in an investment group, for example, and it’s buddies, you go for beers with them or coffee, if you don’t drink.
And so you, maybe that’s their bias and you want to get out of maybe a situation where they’re recommending something, you don’t want to hurt their feelings. But if you take that same thing through the four types of intuition, I have businesses do this with their employees. If the employee might have the right skill set in terms of experiential intuition, they may be very charming in the interview.
That’s relational intuition. But if their resume and they can’t speak to the skills that you need, the situation that you need to get them to get into in the role and responsibility, and they’re an ing, we’ve got a negative signal there. And perhaps they’ve done some risky things in the past, they’ve gone, they’ve passed through the failures, which is creative intuition, but that one type of intuition is still screaming at you, saying there’s a, there’s an issue.
And so when you’re looking at trust, a trusting, trusted relationship. One of the things that if you are, if you don’t look at learning the four types of intuition, if you don’t strengthen those four types, like we’re all naturally strong in one type because of our past education experience. So we always make decisions based on that one lens.
And what we forget is that we’ve got three other lenses that are also looking at that situation, especially in this trusted area. So if we’re always trusting someone and we’re forcing that trust. There’s three other types of intuition that are trying to send you warning signals, but because you’re weaker in them, because you haven’t done this exercise to strengthen them continuously, that’s when you miss your negative intuitive signals.
And that’s when your life starts taking a turn for the worst.
Case Study: The Importance of Listening to Intuition
Sunil Godse: And I’ll give you a case study. There’s a fellow by the name of Ben Jang. And in 2016, this guy was on 80 stages around the world, speaking to a hundred, over a hundred thousand people, professional career on a high. And he said, I just, I knew my intuition was screaming, saying, you’re in a crappy place.
And so this guy’s making six, six, six, seven figures a year. And his intuition is saying, stop. And he does. And he goes away to New Zealand and he starts writing these values on his wall. And he says, this is what my manager wants, my wife wants, it’s what this person wants. Where am I? What do I want?
And ultimately he goes back to Australia. He says, I’m going to move to America. And he does move to the U S and the big problem he had was that his relational intuition was set saying that you’re hanging around a lot of really bad people, materialistic people that happened to him before he came back, renewed saying, I’m going to listen to my And he ignored the signals and he went back to that same routine when he moved to America.
And it said his family came up from Australia and he said in Vietnamese, he said, there’s a saying in Vietnamese that when you hang around squid, you’re going to get ink on you. And his mom basically says, you’re hanging a lot of squid. This is not my boy. And that’s when he said, I need to listen to all the signals.
My intuition is telling me he got rid of the Mercedes in the high end where he was staying downtown LA. Got a van, moved out to the suburbs, and he’s never been happier. And his life’s a lot more simpler. His career took off. He’s now very popular. He’s making waves on YouTube. He talks about the 88 keys of the keyboard and how that informs you in presentations.
And he’s just.
Ben Fraser: That’s cool. That’s a cool story. Okay. I have another kind of, as I could talk about all this, it’s so fascinating.
Recognizing and Avoiding Ponzi Schemes
Ben Fraser: But another thing that’s really interesting to me is like in our space, Ponzi schemes, right? These people that a lot of times they’re high narcissists, narcissistic personality, and very charismatic. And From my perspective, I haven’t interacted with a lot of these people but, watching documentaries and hearing people’s stories that get sucked into Ponzi schemes, a lot of times these people are so high EQ, they can maybe send false signals, it seems like that maybe not, but it seemed like they can be able to hijack some of the intuition because they’re so good at it, right?
And they’re so intentional, potentially manipulative. What’s been your experience in the research around these kinds of NPD type personalities or, Damaging personalities that we can just be more aware of, especially in a space where risk of loss is really damaging and avoiding policy schemes is very important.
There’s not a lot of them out there, thankfully, but, what are some things you could say to someone that is Yeah. To avoid working with something like that.
Sunil Godse: Yeah. So there’s a couple of things. So there are some very professional people out there that are really slick. But there’s one thing that the science definitely shows: there’re seven facial expressions that you cannot change as to once you’re in tune with your intuition and you read, when you read a lot of people.
You get to see that there’s something off this, like the presentation is great. And a lot of these slick people work on some kind of, they’re looking at, there’s an emotional need that they’re filling that you have. So there’s that urgency to be rich, to be famous, to wear the Rolex, to get a private jet.
And so there’s that emotional component that they’re really feeding off of, and that gets you, hyped up and what you’re really doing again, we were talking about the emotions is that you need to subside those emotions, take a step back and say, before I invest in these people, what am I missing?
Why is this in such a great place? A lot of times if you go on the if I get any of these types of requests or it’s a great investment, or it’s too good to be true and the internet is a great place to take a look at problems if they’ve had any legal issues in the past.
Again, situational intuition to say, are these guys for real? Your relational intuition is obviously playing already looking at their facial expressions. And so if you didn’t pick up on the facial expressions, it just means that you’re not strong in relational intuition, which means that from here on in, you need to read people.
And just continue to read people, even if it does, if it feels weird, you need to protect yourself. So there’s something that one of the four types of intuition or more obviously are going to pick up. And those are all red signals. And then if it’s, again, it’s too good to be true, you back away. And again, there’s a difference between your emotional need or want versus your intuitive signals.
They’re totally different. So you really need to spend your time figuring out what your intuitive signals are. Because you consistently avoid these Ponzi schemes. And then once you figure out the pattern is all pattern matching, you’ll be able to sense this in 33 milliseconds. That’s a Ponzi scheme.
That’s a potential Ponzi scheme. That’s a potential Ponzi scheme. You’ll know right away. And I can tell I could, I’ve pitched some of these as you have, you will be, I’m sure you’ll be, you’re able to, the 33 milliseconds, it’ll I know exactly where this is going and that’s your intuition, right?
And so someone who is not as educated or, getting into these plans and schemes for the first time, that’s where they need to go through this exercise to really think, is this my emotions or is this really something realistic? And one of the four types of intuition, all four will tell you.
Ben Fraser: Yeah, so I’m assuming you hit all those kind of seven body language things in your book and Things to learn about because it’s like you said it’s a skill you can learn to develop it’s just a guy I watch a documentary I think it was a Netflix with Bernie Madoff right and it hit this whole story about if you’ve seen it But it’s wild because not only did he fool people for Decades kept it going.
You also fooled the sec, right? Their whole goal is to go and identify Ponzi schemes. And he was slighted to go be like the next. Head of the SEC and it was so interesting how he was so able to manipulate that, but what you’re saying is he’s playing off in these PD people can have the ability to read what the need is of the people around them because they’re high Emotional intelligence and can feed into that and maybe stunt the maybe the negative intuition signal that’s coming.
If that’s I’m hearing most of you right to where it’s blocking something because I don’t maybe clear in that. And it’s being the need that they’re wanting is being met, whether that’s good returns, whether that’s feeling important, whether that’s, whatever it is. And so being able to be in tune with that is so important.
And yeah, it’s just, it’s fascinating to understand some of these, really crazy personalities,
Sunil Godse: If we look at the Bernie Adolf example, in fact, there was, I forget the fellow’s name. He was running UBS securities in the UK.
Ben Fraser: That’s right. Yeah. Yeah.
Sunil Godse: Looked at the returns on paper and he said, This is too good to be true.
I got to trust my intuition. And he actually went to New York, flew to New York.
Ben Fraser: Exactly right. Yeah.
Sunil Godse: And he told them, if you’re not going to pull, if you don’t give me the information I need right now, I’m pulling my assets, which he did. He advised all his people. Ultimately your investors have to make the decision to pull out or not.
All these investors stayed in because they got that sweet tooth of a beautiful financial return, even though this fellow advised them, there’s something wrong. I advise you to pull out. So it, you don’t even need someone like that trust that was, that’s the, again, that’s your situational intuition. That’s one, because the return was too high compared to similar basket and securities and creative intuition.
Number two saying, if you don’t pull out of this, something’s not going to work. And that’s your creative intuition. And then when he goes to New York, now he’s got Bernie made up, not giving him this information, which is relational intuition and experiential intuition is now saying, this is too good to be true.
Yeah. All four types of intuition now say that’s exactly what he was advising.
Ben Fraser: Yeah. Great point. No, I forgot about that point. He was the one that really drove the whole issue home and ended up getting him convicted. So that’s a great point. So exactly. Very awesome. So cool.
Applying Intuitive Branding in Business
Ben Fraser: The last segment here, talk a little bit about what you do now for your business consultancy, right?
Because we’ve talked a lot about investors and how to use these tools and we’ll link to the books, these things in the show notes. People can get them, but how does this apply to a business owner, right? How do you use these concepts to help businesses take it to the next level and use it in intuition to make that better decision making?
As a business owner.
Sunil Godse: Yeah. So I’ve got a five step process called intuitive branding. And if you go, people go to intuitive dash branding. com, they can see what the five step process is. And there’s a bunch of testimonials that people went through. But why the first of the five steps is what I do is exactly what we were discussing here.
As I look at your past good and bad business decisions, I get you to, first of all, understand what the four types of intuition are and strengthen them. Because as I mentioned earlier, You’re always strongest in one, which means you’re weakest in the other three. And so once you strengthen all four by evaluating your past business decisions, now, you know what your positive signals are and your negative intuitive signals are, then you take that into a leadership role and say, okay, if you want to scale your business.
You have to have a brand story because it’s all about branding and trust. Where you have a vision, you’ve got a mission and you’ve got core values that employees can intuitively want to join you. So that’s the influential part. And so when they resonate with what you’re trying to do as a business, because we all started a business for a reason and you need to articulate that from the four types of intuition.
So I take that vision through and make sure it crosses all four types of intuition, because don’t forget, just like you have four types of intuition, so do your customers and so do your employees. Yeah. So once you have a vision, mission, values that your employees resonate with, then in the third one, which is intuitive hiring, you make sure that they’re set up for success and now you’ve deepened their trust and then you’re from the, and then steps four and five focus on the customer to say, where’s your messaging and the messaging has to touch all four types of intuition that attracts them to the brand.
And then the fifth step is expanding your products and services. That intuitively aligns with what you have, and then they’re going to buy more. And the science shows that when they trust your brand, they buy more, even if those services are priced higher and there’s your revenues. And when your employees are super productive because they intuitively want to work with you, your expenses go down, there’s your profits.
And that’s how you scale. So that’s a five step intuitive branding process. Typically it takes 12 months. The worst I’ve had so far was someone going from 900, 000 to 1. 6 million. That’s my worst client. Best client went from 400, 000 to 13 million.
Ben Fraser: Wow. Over what time period?
Sunil Godse: That was two years, two and a half years.
Ben Fraser: Sheesh. And it’s amazing. Okay.
Conclusion and Resources
Ben Fraser: Definitely put that link in the show notes for our listeners or owners to check out. So Neil, thank you so much. It’s really interesting. I love this discussion and this kind of area of focus. And definitely I learned a lot today. So I’m sure of our listeners.
We’ll take some good nuggets. Again tell us the best way to Learn more about you and about your branding agency. And we’ll probably get in the show notes.
Sunil Godse: Sure. Yeah. So you can go to https://www.intuitive-branding.com/ for that side. There’s https://www.sunilgodse.com/ for the books and my speaking. If you want me to come to your event or your corporate event I’m on all the socials and we’ll be putting out a lot of content coming out in force here.
So we’re working on a lot of YouTube videos for about a month or so and we’re going to hit the social media waves with the Tons of stories of trusting intuition, ignoring intuition, and the things that happen when you do both. It works out if you trust, obviously. And if you don’t, boy oh boy, watch out.
Ben Fraser: Awesome. Sunil, thank you so much for coming on. This was really fun.
Sunil Godse: Thank you.
Ben Fraser: Excited to get to work.
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