Hi there!
Gideon Shalwick here.
Recently I got asked by my friend Tyrone Shum: What is the key thing that allows me to live
the lifestyle that I live?
Let me just quickly tell you a little bit about my lifestyle.
I live in the center of Brisbane in Australia, next to a really beautiful inner city park,
fact the biggest inner city subtropical garden in the world.
And I work from home; my wife, she helps me.
I've got a beautiful little girl.
She was born a few weeks ago, three months ago or so.
And I just love it.
I love what I do.
Everyday I wake up and I can't believe that I'm getting paid for what I'm doing.
And I think there is one key concept that has really helped me live the lifestyle that
I can live today.
Let me explain it to you.
It's called the hedgehog concept.
It's not really rocket science.
But I learned this for the first time from a gentleman called Mike Filsaime.
He is a very very successful internet marketer.
I interviewed him and he explained this to me.
He read it from Jim Collins who wrote a book, Good To Great.
Basically it's a way to figure out what it is that you're supposed to be doing with your
life and with your business.
You can apply to both your life personally, but also to a business life as well.
Basically it's the intersection of three thingsâ three circles.
He draws a picture of three circles.
The first circle is about what you're truly passionate about.
The things that you have a natural talent, for example.
The second circle is about your skill level.
What is it that you become the best at in the world?
And the third circle is how you can make money from it.
He calls it your profit per X.
So where those three circles intersect, where they intersent right in the middleâ that's
called your hedgehog concept.
It's actually taken me a number of years to figure out my hedgehog concept and it is not
unusual for bigger companies to take two to three years sometimes to fully figure it out.
Once you've figured it out, it gives you that laser focus for what you should be doing with
your life and with your business.
And trust me, it helps you rocket ahead like you've never seen it before.
Jim Collins also talks about the breakthrough point that you get to.
You get to a point in your business career that if you've been focusing on your hedgehog
concept for long enough, you get to this breakthrough point.
He explains it with the fly wheel concept.
Sometimes it's very difficult to get the fly wheel starting.
To start to spin you get to push and push at the beginning.
But as you keep on pushing at the same direction, after awhile, the thing starts spinning itself.
And that's the breakthrough point.
I've definitely reached the breakthrough point with my business now because I've been focusing
on my own hedgehog concept so much.
And that has helped me tremendously.
It's really quite liberating because now, when I get approached by someone for a new
opportunity (because I get approached so many times; almost everyday I get a new request
for a new business that people want to start with me), I'm crystal clear on my hedgehog
concept.
And because I am crystal clear on it, I can very easily say, "Look, that's a great opportunity.
But it doesn't fit with my hedgehog concept so I'm going to have to say NO".
So it's really easy for me to just say NO to things.
Whereas before, I would have to really think carefully and long and hard about any opportunity
that came my way.
Now it's just so easy.
It helps me to cut out all the stuff that I don't need to be focusing on and allows
me to have this laser focus on my own hedgehog concept which helps me become a lot more successful.
I'm not sure what you may have expected.
To think it wasn't internet that gave me this freedom.
It wasn't online video.
It wasn't joint venture partnerships.
Whatever else, it wasn't outsourcing even.
None of those things.
All those things are important but all of that is based on my hedgehog concept.
And I don't think I would have been as successful as I am today without the hedgehog concept.
So thanks to Mike Filsaime, who first introduced me to the concept.
And of course, Jim Collins who has written an amazing book, Good To Great.
Make sure you read it.
Talking about books, I've written a book recently as well that I've released.
You can get it for free on my website.
You can go to RapidVideoBlogging.com.
It shows you a little bit of what I do to make money online with video blogging in particular.
Inside the book, the first chapter, I talk about the hedgehog concept in a lot more detail
as well.
Tyrone, thanks for the really good question.
I'm glad you asked it and I hope this is helping you and your viewers and your audience also
to become more successful, not only with what they're doing online but with everything else
in their life as well.
Thank you for watching and I'll see you inside my next video.