When I first met Bo Burlingham years ago during his visit to Trinidad, I didn’t fully appreciate who I was standing in front of. I knew him as the author of Small Giants, but not the full depth of his influence. I didn’t know then that Bo was one of the most respected business thinkers of his generation — a longtime editor at Inc. Magazine, a writer who shaped how entrepreneurs around the world think about success, and a man whose work challenged the default obsession with scale.

Bo spent decades at Inc., ultimately becoming its Executive Editor, and he had a front-row seat to thousands of companies — fast-growing startups, family businesses, turnarounds, and iconic American brands. He could see patterns long before the rest of us could. And one of those patterns became the backbone of his book Small Giants: some of the best, healthiest, most admired businesses were not the biggest. In fact, they were often the ones that deliberately chose not to grow.

That conviction reshaped how many leaders now think about success.

When he signed my copy of Small Giants, he wrote a line I didn’t fully understand back then:

Thanks for the mojo you bring into the world. Go for the mojo.

It’s only with time, wisdom, and a few cycles of entrepreneurship under my belt that I now appreciate how profound that word is in Bo’s vocabulary.

Mojo, to Bo, is the life force of a business. The thing that makes a company feel alive. The alignment between what it says, what it does, and who it is. Culture, purpose, energy, clarity, and integrity wrapped into one.

And here’s the thing: mojo has consequences.

Companies in Small Giants were selected not because they were famous, fast-growing, or wildly profitable, but because they were anchored. They knew themselves. They protected their culture. They resisted pressure to grow beyond their identity. They measured success differently: by craftsmanship, community, belonging, purpose, and excellence.

Years later, when you look at who survived, the contrast becomes striking.

Several Small Giants companies are still quietly thriving — Zingerman’s, ECCO, Clif Bar, O.C. Tanner. Not massive. Not explosive. Just enduring. Still loved. Still relevant. Still deeply aligned.

Now compare that with some of the companies celebrated in Good to Great, Jim Collins’ classic. These were huge corporations praised for outperforming markets, demonstrating disciplined leadership, and hitting financial markers that Wall Street adores. Yet some of those giants faltered, stumbled, or disappeared entirely. Circuit City. Fannie Mae. Others suffered reputational blows or structural decline.

The lesson isn’t that big companies are bad or small companies are superior. It’s that scale alone does not make you strong. And metrics alone do not make you great.

Mojo does something very simple but very rare: it roots a company in itself.

• It gives it identity.
• It gives it coherence.
• It gives it staying power.

A company with mojo can remain small and still be mighty.
A company without mojo can be enormous and still be hollow.

Bo understood this long before the business world had language for it. Today, in a world obsessed with hypergrowth, market capture, billion-dollar valuations, and “blitzscaling,” his work feels even more relevant.

What he recognized — and what I now see through my own lens as an Organizational & People Development Sensemaker — is that greatness is not about size. It’s about soul. It’s about alignment. It’s about being true to who you are and building a business that reflects that truth at every level.

Some companies scale performance. The rare ones scale presence. Those are the ones that last.

Bo told me, “Go for the mojo.” I finally understand why.

Strategic Reflection Prompt

Where in your business is your mojo strongest, and where is it being diluted by pressure, pace, or misalignment? What would change if you chose to be deeply aligned before you chose to grow?

About Giselle

I’m Giselle Hudson — writer, possibility thinker, musician, Organization & People Development Sensemaker™, and MCODE Legacy Coach. I help leaders and soul-driven professionals decode the deeper patterns shaping their business, work, identities, and results especially when it look like a performance issue but it’s really misalignment in disguise.

If something in your life or business feels off and you can’t quite name it, message me. Sometimes one conversation is all it takes to see what’s really going on.