When the Whispers Get Loud: Using Perspective to Navigate Your Founder Journey

The entrepreneurial journey isn't just a rollercoaster—it's a rollercoaster in the dark where the track is being built as you go. Monday, I'm celebrating a new client. Tuesday, I'm convinced it's never going to work. Thursday, I'm somehow back on top with promising leads. This emotional pendulum isn't just normal; it's practically the founder's initiation ritual.

As a former executive who left a 30-year corporate career to start my own company, I've discovered that perspective shifts aren't just helpful—they're essential survival tools. That nagging feeling on quiet Sunday afternoons that something wasn't aligned in my corporate role became the whisper I finally learned to trust. Now, those same whispers guide my business decisions, helping me distinguish between normal entrepreneurial fear and genuine warning signs that something needs adjustment.

From Corporate Whispers to Entrepreneurial Wisdom

My journey began with subtle whispers during my corporate career—that Sunday evening dread, the ethical misalignments I rationalized, and the growing sense I was building someone else's dream. While those whispers eventually led me to entrepreneurship, it's in building my own company where I've truly learned their value.

What makes whispers so powerful in entrepreneurship is that they're now connected directly to your vision, not someone else's framework. When you're the decision-maker, those intuitive nudges become your most valuable guidance system—if you learn to interpret them correctly.

The Founder's Journey: A Cycle of Growth Through Transition

In my book "The Cost of Staying," I introduce what I call the Growth Through Grief Spiral - a framework that illuminates how we navigate major life transitions. While in my book I explore how this framework applies to various life transitions, here I'll focus specifically on how entrepreneurs can apply these same principles to business decisions:

• The Whisper Phase: Those subtle nudges telling you something needs to change in your business model, team structure, or offerings.
• The Letting Go Phase: The courageous moments of releasing ideas, strategies or even team members that no longer serve your vision.
• The Possibility Phase: The exciting period where new opportunities emerge in the space created by letting go.
• The Integration Phase: Where all these experiences weave together, creating a stronger, more authentic business.

This spiral isn't a one-and-done journey. We move through these phases repeatedly with each major business decision, each challenge, and each pivot. The magic happens when you recognize which phase you're in and honor its purpose instead of fighting against it.

The Founder's Intuition: Your Hidden Business Asset

Most entrepreneurs focus on tangible assets: the client list, intellectual property, and cash reserves. But your founder's intuition—that complex interplay of experience, pattern recognition, and gut feeling—might be your most undervalued asset.

In corporate life, ignoring whispers meant personal dissatisfaction. In entrepreneurship, those same ignored signals can mean the difference between sustainable growth and painful missteps.

Navigating Your Whispers: Three Categories to Guide Decision-Making

Once you recognize you're in the Whisper Phase of the growth spiral, the next challenge becomes interpreting what these whispers are actually telling you. Through my work with entrepreneurs, I've identified three distinct categories of whispers that require different responses:

• Direction Whispers: These question whether you're building the right thing. They sound like: "This new service offering doesn't feel aligned with our core mission," or "I'm excited about the business but not this particular direction."
• Pace Whispers: These question the speed at which you're moving. They sound like: "We're growing too fast to maintain quality," or conversely, "We're playing too small when we should be scaling."
• People Whispers: These highlight relational misalignments. They sound like: "This investor's vision conflicts with our values," or "This hire feels wrong despite the impressive resume."

Learning to categorize your whispers transforms vague discomfort into actionable intelligence. Each type of whisper calls for a different strategic response - direction whispers may require revisiting your mission, pace whispers might demand adjusting timelines or resources, while people whispers often signal the need for difficult but necessary conversations.

Whispers in Business Building: Your Strategic Advantage

When I launched my company, I assumed the whispers would disappear now that I was following my passion. Instead, they became more nuanced and crucial to my success.

As business builders, we face a unique challenge: distinguishing between normal entrepreneurial anxiety and genuine intuitive warnings. Is that knot in your stomach about your new service offering just standard launch nerves, or is it your intuition flagging a real issue with the market fit? Is your hesitation about a potential partnership just fear of growth, or a legitimate warning about misaligned values?

The greatest entrepreneurs I've met don't have fewer doubts—they've simply developed a more sophisticated relationship with them. They've learned to use these internal signals as strategic tools rather than dismissing them as weakness or indecision.

When Whispers Signal Values Misalignment

The most persistent whispers in business often point to values misalignment rather than strategy concerns. In "The Cost of Staying," I share how reconnecting with my core values - transparency, courage, family, curiosity, and autonomy - clarified which environments and relationships could no longer work for me.

As founders, our businesses become expressions of our deepest values. When we feel persistent unease about a client relationship, partnership opportunity, or growth direction, it's often because it conflicts with these foundational values.

I recommend every entrepreneur create their "Values Compass" - identifying 3-5 non-negotiable values that guide all decisions. When whispers emerge around a particular opportunity, check it against this compass. Often what seems like a practical concern is actually your internal wisdom flagging a values mismatch that no amount of financial success can overcome.

The Entrepreneur's Calculation

One of my most powerful "Aha! moments" came when I realized I had spent years calculating the cost of leaving my corporate role, but never truly calculated the cost of staying. Entrepreneurs face this same calculation with every significant business decision.

When considering a pivot, ending a partnership, or changing your business model, we naturally fixate on what we might lose. What about the investment we've already made? The clients we might disappoint? The revenue we might temporarily sacrifice?

Yet we rarely calculate the ongoing cost of maintaining the status quo: The energy drain of misaligned projects. The opportunity cost of saying "yes" to the wrong clients. The gradual erosion of passion when building something that doesn't fully align with your vision.

The next time you feel stuck in a business decision, try this: Create two columns. In one, list everything you might lose by making a change. In the other, list everything you're currently losing by not making it. This simple shift in perspective often reveals that the status quo is far more expensive than we realize.

The Perspective Flip Exercise

When faced with persistent whispers, I use what I call the "Perspective Flip" exercise—examining challenges through multiple lenses to gain clarity and make decisions aligned with both immediate needs and long-term vision.

The Time-Travel Lens

When caught in the emotional storm of a business challenge, I ask myself:

• How will I feel about this decision six months from now?
• What would my five-years-from-now self advise me to do?
• If this were already in the past, what would I have wished I'd done differently?

This temporal shift often reveals which concerns are momentary and which represent deeper misalignments that will persist or grow if not addressed.

For example, when considering a high-value client whose communication style created constant anxiety, my present self saw only the revenue. My future self, however, recognized the pattern of similar clients who ultimately drained more energy than they contributed value. I declined the opportunity and created space for clients who aligned better with my business values.

The Friend Lens

We're often harsher with ourselves than we would be with others. When I'm struggling with a business decision, I ask:

• What would I advise my closest founder friend to do in this situation?
• How would I evaluate this opportunity if it were presented to someone I care about?
• What strengths would I remind a peer of if they were facing this challenge?

The Friend perspective allows you to bypass the self-criticism that can cloud judgment and access the wisdom we already possess but sometimes fail to apply to ourselves.

When I was hesitating to invest in a business coach early in my entrepreneurial journey, applying the friend lens made the decision clear. I would have emphatically encouraged any friend to make the investment that ultimately accelerated my business growth by years.

The Growth Lens

Fear and growth often go hand in hand. When I'm uncertain whether a whisper represents valid caution or simply fear of expansion, I ask:

• Is this challenge nudging me toward growth, even if it's uncomfortable?
• Am I avoiding this path because it's wrong for my business or because it requires me to develop new capabilities?
• What's the growth opportunity hidden within this problem?

This lens helps distinguish between whispers warning us away from genuine misalignment and those simply highlighting our growing edge.

When I received an invitation to speak at an industry conference early in my business, my initial impulse was to decline. The whispers of inadequacy were loud. Through the growth lens, I recognized this as precisely the visibility challenge I needed to embrace, not avoid.

Writing Your Founder Permission Slip

As entrepreneurs, we're constantly seeking validation - from customers, investors, the market, our peers. In "The Cost of Staying," I introduce the concept of writing your own permission slips rather than waiting for external approval.

Try creating your Founder Permission Slip:

"I, [Your Name], give myself permission to:

• Define success differently than industry standards
• Change my business model when something isn't working
• Say no to clients who drain more energy than they contribute
• Celebrate wins others might not understand
• Trust my whispers even when conventional wisdom says otherwise"

The most innovative business builders aren't those who follow established playbooks - they're the ones who write their own. Your permission slip becomes a powerful reminder that you don't need anyone else's approval to build a business that aligns with your authentic vision.

Trusting the Process: When Whispers Contradict

One of the most challenging scenarios emerges when different types of whispers seem to contradict each other. Your direction whispers might be enthusiastically affirming a new offering, while your pace whispers caution that you're moving too quickly.

In these cases, I've learned to:

• Document everything: Write down all whispers without judgment, looking for patterns over time rather than isolated moments of doubt
• Seek outside perspective: Consult trusted advisors who understand both your business and your values
• Test rather than commit: Find small ways to test the waters before making irrevocable decisions
• Trust the integration: Allow time for internal contradictions to resolve as more information emerges

From Whispers to Business Wisdom

Building a business guarantees nothing except constant evolution—of your offerings, your leadership, and your strategic direction. What begins as vague whispers can transform into your greatest competitive advantage when properly respected and interpreted.

The most successful entrepreneurs I know aren't those with perfect clarity at every step. They're the ones who've developed a sophisticated relationship with uncertainty, learning when to push through normal fear and when to pivot based on genuine warnings.

Since starting my company, I've faced countless decision points where the conventional wisdom pointed one way while my whispers suggested another. Following these whispers—with appropriate testing and validation—has led to my most profitable pivots and most valuable client relationships.

Perhaps the most consequential example was when I was six months into my coaching business. Things were going well enough, but something felt misaligned. Using the Perspective Flip exercise, I realized what my whispers were trying to tell me: while I loved coaching, I also deeply missed the event planning aspect of my corporate career. The conventional path would have been to choose one or the other. Instead, I embraced what seemed contradictory and created a unique hybrid model—combining leadership coaching with hotel sourcing for events. Many advisors questioned this unconventional combination. But by honoring both passions, I've built something uniquely mine that energizes me daily and attracts clients who appreciate my distinctive blend of skills.

By using perspective shifts as navigational tools, we transform the isolating experience of entrepreneurial doubt into a strategic practice that strengthens both our businesses and our decision-making confidence. The whispers will always be part of building something meaningful—our advantage comes from how skillfully we listen and respond.

Article by:

Kristen Chimack, Author, Empowerment Coach, and Manager Global Accounts HelmsBriscoe

Independent Licensee with HelmsBriscoe - Global Leader in Hotel Site Selection & the Placement of Meetings & Events