339: Trust Your Intuition in Business — A Lesson in Serenity and the Next Play, with Bron Watson

What Two Cancer Diagnoses Taught My Guest About Listening to Herself

Most of us grip tighter when life feels uncertain. We work harder, plan more, and try to control everything within reach. My guest this week learned something different: the real work isn’t gripping tighter. It’s learning to trust your intuition in business, even when logic and everyone around you says otherwise.

Bron Watson is a nurse, educator, and entrepreneur. She built a thriving coaching business over the years, but a quiet voice kept telling her something wasn’t right the whole time. She ignored it. Then came a breast cancer diagnosis. Five years later, a second one followed: an incurable blood cancer.

In this conversation, Bron and I talk about what it costs to override your own intuition, and what it means to control the controllables when nothing feels controllable at all. If you’ve ever pushed through something your gut told you to stop and look at, this episode is for you.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

• Why Bron believes learning to trust your intuition in business could have saved her years of pain
• Why Bron calls the business she built her “saber-tooth tiger” — and what happens when you can’t get off
• The difference between letting go and what Bron calls feeling the feels, controlling the controllables
  Why Bron believes everyone can heal, even when not everyone gets a cure
• How focusing on the next play, instead of the whole game, changes what’s possible under pressure

Listen to the Full Episode

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The Business She Built While Ignoring Her Own Voice

For years, Bron grew what she now calls her saber-tooth tiger business model. She kept feeding it her energy, and the thing kept growing until she was riding something she couldn’t safely climb off. She knew, deep down, the business wasn’t right for her. But she built it anyway, because it looked like what other people were doing, and that’s what she thought success was supposed to look like.

“I knew, and I didn’t listen, because I thought I was doing what I was meant to do.” — Bron Watson

After her diagnosis in 2017, everything moved fast. Six days later, she was on an operating table for a mastectomy. Three weeks after that, chemotherapy started, and somehow, she kept working through it — hosting Facebook Lives for her mastermind because she felt she owed her clients that level of commitment, no matter the cost to herself.

The Moment Everything Stopped

During her second round of chemo, Bron caught her own reflection right after finishing a Facebook Live. She didn’t recognize the woman staring back: bald, sick, still healing from surgery, pushing through anyway. So she made a decision, right there, with no backup plan. She shut the mastermind down overnight.

“Please don’t wait for the brick through the back of the head. Listen to the little voice, because that little voice is there, but you’ve got to be quiet.” — Bron Watson

It took five years to unravel that old pattern. Then, in February 2023, a second diagnosis arrived: an incurable blood cancer. This time, instead of pushing through, Bron rebuilt her business and her life around one word: healing.

Why Trusting Your Intuition in Business Is Worth the Discomfort

Bron has a phrase for what came next: feel the feels, control the controllables. Instead of pushing an emotion away so she can keep functioning, she lets herself feel it completely. Then she asks what’s actually within her control right now, and she releases the rest. Underneath all of it is the same root lesson: trust your intuition in business before life makes the decision for you.

This isn’t the same thing as “just letting it go.” That phrase, Bron says, can feel dismissive to someone who’s genuinely grieving or afraid. Emotions move in waves, and when you try to block a wave, you usually just cause more damage.

“Don’t try to stop it. You cause a lot of problems. Let the wave happen. Be with it. And then, once you’re done feeling it, you can move forward.” — Bron Watson

Cure Versus Healing: A Distinction Worth Sitting With

Bron draws a line that reframes how she runs both her health and her business: not everyone gets a cure, but everyone can heal. For her, healing has nothing to do with guarantees or outcomes. It’s about staying present, finding gratitude even in the face of grief, and choosing, one moment at a time, where her energy goes.

“Not everyone will get a cure, but everyone can go on a path of healing.” — Bron Watson

So when business gets hard, Bron doesn’t try to solve the whole season at once. She focuses on the next play. Just the one step in front of her — and that’s enough.

About Bron Watson

Bron Watson is a nurse, educator, entrepreneur, and founder of The Social Coach and The Serenity Project. With decades of experience as a registered nurse and educator, she’s spent her career drawn to spaces where care, communication, and connection matter most.

She founded her first business in 2012, helping business owners share their voice online with authenticity and purpose. Over the past decade, her work through The Social Coach has supported thousands of people to show up in life and business with intention.

Then, in 2017, everything shifted with a breast cancer diagnosis. Five years later, a second diagnosis followed: an incurable blood cancer. These experiences deepened something in Bron, a belief that healing reaches far beyond the physical. It’s emotional, spiritual, and entirely personal.

So she created The Serenity Project, a space where science meets soul, with evidence and perspective in equal measure. She calls it the “third space,” and she runs it alongside her continued work with The Social Coach.

Connect with Bron Watson

• Website: serenityproject.com.au
• Facebook: Bron Watson
• Instagram: @bron_watson
• LinkedIn: Bron Watson

Bron’s Invitation to Game On Girlfriend® Listeners

If you know someone navigating a cancer diagnosis, Bron invites you to join The Serenity Project newsletter. Sign up here.

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Related Episodes You’ll Love

Episode 92: The ONE Thing That Will Never Steer You Wrong (It’s the Softest Voice in the Room) — I talked about this exact idea long before Bron joined the show: the quiet, internal voice that knows before our brain catches up. If her message about listening before the brick through the back of the head landed for you, this episode goes even deeper into hearing that voice in your own body. Listen here

Episode 44: How To Be Great In The Face Of Uncertainty — Bron talks about feeling the feels and controlling the controllables when life throws something completely outside the plan. Here, I give you three concrete ways to do exactly that, recorded during one of the most uncertain stretches many of us have lived through. Listen here

Episode 113: World Events, Stress & Your Ambition — How They Go Together — If this conversation had you thinking about how much you can give before something has to change, start here next. It’s about staying connected to your humanity and your ambition at the same time, instead of sacrificing one for the other. Listen here

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My Free Gift to You — Let’s Talk About Your Business

If this episode had you thinking about the voice you’ve been ignoring or a business model that no longer fits who you are, let’s talk about it. As my free gift to Girlfriends, I offer a 30-minute discovery call. We’ll talk about where you are right now and what might be getting in the way.

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Connect with Sarah

• Instagram: @thesarahwalton
• LinkedIn: Sarah Walton
• Free resources for you
• Join the Game On Girlfriend® community — subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube

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Love This Episode?

If you know a woman pushing through something she shouldn’t be carrying alone, send this episode her way. Sometimes the most useful thing to hear is that listening to yourself isn’t a luxury. It’s the work.

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About Sarah Walton

Sarah Walton is a wealth consciousness coach, strategic advisor, and the host of the Game On Girlfriend® podcast. Her mission is simple: to put more money in the hands of more women. She helps women entrepreneurs build profitable, sustainable businesses without burnout — working through both the mindset and the strategy sides of growth. Because when women have more financial power, they don’t just keep it — they use it to take care of their families, support their communities, and build something bigger than themselves. Through her programs — including the Abundance Academy and The Art of Receiving — along with her online courses and one-on-one coaching, Sarah works with women who are ready to build profitable businesses and use that financial power to make a real difference in the world around them.