My wife Jenny and I discovered something about 20 years ago, and it has served us well ever since. We discovered that our first instincts about a matter are usually the right ones. This has been true in both our personal and business lives.

The Power of First Instincts

Prior to our “lightbulb moment,” we would find ourselves staying at hotels, eating at restaurants, or pursuing a business direction when our first instinct told us not to. As you have probably experienced yourself, this never ends well. I’ll paint our “lightbulb moment” picture for you.

We were traveling through a town we had never been in before. It was lunchtime, and we began looking for a restaurant. We randomly chose one and walked in. There was only one table of patrons in the restaurant. We stood on a welcome mat at the entrance that looked like it hadn’t been vacuumed in weeks and waited about two minutes for a staff member to acknowledge our existence. Finally, a waiter loudly yelled from about 30 feet away, “Sit anywhere you like.” Jenny and I sat down and started getting that awkward feeling.

“Should I stay or should I go now?”

After several more minutes, a waiter brought us some menus, took our drink order, and walked away. We began looking through the slightly soiled menus and then looked up at each other. The song lyrics of The Clash came to mind, “Should I stay or should I go now?” Do we follow our first instinct, accept the embarrassment of telling the staff we’re not staying, or do we stay and plow through what we already know will be a terrible dining experience? That afternoon, 20 years ago, my wife and I looked at each other and said, “No way, never again. You gotta know when to fold ‘em.” We left $10 on the table for the iced tea we ordered and walked out, vowing from that moment on to always go with our first instinct.

Applying This Wisdom in Business

Since that fateful day, we have walked out of many restaurants, switched hotels, and stopped pursuing bad business decisions as well. The latest example came just a few weeks ago as we were celebrating our 35th wedding anniversary in Sicily. Our first instincts served us well again.

My wife had booked a beautiful boutique hotel that got good reviews and the pictures looked amazing. However, when we got there, it was not exactly as advertised. We checked into our warm room, changed, and headed down to the slightly overcrowded pool. It was nice but was just not as expected. I looked at Jenny and said, “What do you think?” She replied, “I’m not feeling it.” Now comes the tough decision: do you stay at the prepaid, no refund, disappointing hotel, or do you “know when to fold ‘em” and go? We left the next morning for a new hotel, Le Calette, and ended up having one of the most wonderful anniversary vacations of our 35-year marriage.

Thanks, Dave