In a recent Monday morning meeting I proposed an important question to my team: What is your hedgehog?
As Fesyk Marketing continues to grow I find myself revisiting inspiring business concepts more and more. I began to dig into these concepts years ago, but they’ve become even more meaningful since I’ve started to grow my own business. One author I recently went back to is Jim Collins. If you’re not familiar with Jim Collins, he is a brilliant author of well-known books including Good to Great and Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0 (must-reads for any business owner), and he’s responsible for some pivotal concepts including the Flywheel Concept, the Stockade Paradox, and the Hedgehog Concept.
I totally geek out over inspirational concepts like these, and as a small business owner I find Jim Collins’ insights to be invaluable. I think it’s more important than ever for businesses to look inward and define what they truly do better than anyone else. This can help you to connect with your audience on a deeper level, or to create a stellar marketing plan for your clients that they won’t get anywhere else.
The Hedgehog Concept
The Hedgehog Concept is “a simple, crystalline concept that flows from deep understanding about the intersection of three circles.” Each circle poses a pivotal question that, when you can confidently answer each one, you’ll have something a lot of others don’t: The upper hand on what makes you the best in your industry.
The three circles that make up your hedgehog include:
- What are you deeply passionate about?
- What can you be the best in the world at?
- What best drives your economic or resource engine?
The term “hedgehog” comes from Isaiah Berlin’s famous essay The Hedgehog and the Fox. Based upon an ancient Greek parable, Berlin divides the world into hedgehogs and foxes, where foxes know many things but hedgehogs know one big thing.
When you truly reflect and answer these three questions, you can identify the one big thing you do best in the world.
Why your hedgehog is the secret to success – professionally and personally!
I know, it feels intimidating to actually consider that you might be the best in the word at something. And when I asked my team this very question, their faces said it all: I have no idea!
But follow me for a second here.
Not only am I going to ask you what your business does better than anyone else, I’m going to ask you what YOU do better than anyone else.
Why is it so important that you can confidently answer these questions? Because when you can truly understand what you’re passionate about, how you can be the best at the thing you’re passionate about, and communicate to others why they should love it too, promoting your business becomes a natural instinct. And what more could a business owner want?
How the Hedgehog Concept has helped grow my business
We’re emerging from a pandemic, and the struggle is real. These past couple of months have brought some really big changes to my business. We’re not who we were a year ago, and neither are our clients. The world has changed, and fingers crossed, it’s for the better. But that being said, it’s hard to pivot your business unexpectedly.
We’ve all had (maybe too much) time to look inward. Why do we do what we do? If we can take a moment to truly define what it is that we’re passionate about, what we do better than others, and what lights us up in business, we might just be able to find that sweet spot.
Since discovering our hedgehogs, my team is beginning to feel a bit more confident in what we do, why we do it, and how we’re truly the best at it!
If you know your one big thing – if you’re a hedgehog – then you can adapt to anything and boldly take the next steps in your life and in your business.
But if you need a little help figuring out how to share your hedgehog with your clients, we’d love to help you. Send us an email and let’s start strengthening those connections!
About Fesyk Marketing
We’re a boutique agency that believes great relationships are the key to having a successful and sustainable business. And we see opportunities for connection and collaboration everywhere!
Our amazing team specializes in creating content and leveraging social media to help our clients strengthen relationships, increase referral rates and attract new business. As a vision based company we create bespoke marketing plans with the end goal in mind and then work right alongside you to make it happen.
One of our favourite mantras is, “If you can dream it, you can do it.” and have proven time and time again that authentic, meaningful content is the foundation for building a community of loyal customers.
Does this sound interesting to you? Send us an e-mail to connect and learn more about how relationship marketing can help your business.