Once I believed that spreadsheets held the key to every business decision. As a serial entrepreneur, founder of METAL International, host of a syndicated radio show on over 350 radio stations with a daily listening audience of over 3 million, and interviewer of over 30,000 leaders, which has allowed me to understand how leaders think, for years as a leader in media, entertainment, and technology, I crunched numbers relentlessly, only to discover that my breakthrough moments—the pivotal hires, the lifesaving pivots, and the features I wisely axed—emerged not from data models but from a quieter, more elusive source. This realization echoes a pattern seen among the world's most successful executives: intuition isn't luck; it's a trainable superpower forged from compressed experience.

In 2025, as artificial intelligence reshapes industries and floods leaders with unprecedented data streams, intuition stands out as the human counterbalance. Surveys reveal that 85% of CEOs base decisions on gut feelings, according to research from the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute. Yet, a Confluent study from late 2024 found that many business leaders still prioritize intuition over data for high-stakes calls, emphasizing the need for real-time insights that AI can't fully replicate. This blend of instinct and information has propelled companies like Apple, Berkshire Hathaway, and Amazon to staggering valuations—Apple at $3.41 trillion, Berkshire at $1.02 trillion, and Amazon at $2.39 trillion as of August 2025—proving that in an era of algorithms, the subconscious mind remains a competitive moat.

Consider Steve Jobs' return to Apple in 1997. Facing a bloated product lineup, he slashed 70% of offerings in weeks, a move that defied market research but revived the company. Jobs, who once credited his intuition—honed during a transformative trip to India—for seeing "tremendous expanse in the moment," turned Apple from near-bankruptcy into a tech juggernaut. Similarly, Warren Buffett sat out the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, enduring ridicule as "washed up," only to emerge unscathed when the bubble burst. His instinct, built from decades of pattern recognition, preserved Berkshire Hathaway's value while others crumbled.

Jeff Bezos formalized this approach at Amazon, advocating for decisions with just 70% of the desired information. "That missing 30%? That's where your gut lives," as I put it, channeling Bezos' philosophy. Bezos' rule acknowledges that waiting for perfection often means missing opportunities, a lesson validated by Harvard Business School studies showing CEOs who pair intuition with data outperform those relying on analytics alone by up to 20% in long-term returns.