Last Sunday, something happened in Hungary that many had considered impossible. Péter Magyar won the parliamentary elections with a two-thirds majority, abruptly ending Viktor Orbán’s sixteen-year grip on power. His party, Tisza, is barely two years old. He had no established party apparatus, no seven-figure budget and no fully developed programme. He won anyway.

Magyar’s starting position bears a striking resemblance to the reality facing many small and medium-sized enterprises: limited resources, formidable competitors and the perennial question of how to be heard regardless. Five lessons from his campaign translate directly to the boardroom – or, more likely, the kitchen table where most small businesses are run.

Magyar’s political career began not with a press conference but with a YouTube interview. In February 2024, he spoke – unprepared, direct and personal – about double standards and corruption within a system he had himself been part of. The video was watched millions of times and laid the foundation for everything that followed.

The lesson for small businesses is straightforward: authenticity outperforms expensive production. Smaller firms have a structural advantage here, precisely because they can present a human face. A manufacturer filming a prototype on a smartphone – flaws and all – frequently generates more genuine engagement than any polished campaign. So does the founder who replaces a generic “About us” page with a short, unscripted video explaining, with visible emotion and no teleprompter, why the company exists. That is something large corporations cannot replicate – and something Magyar understood instinctively.

Magyar did not try to say everything. He chose the issues that genuinely preoccupied his audience: a crumbling health system, failing schools, pensioner poverty, the exodus of young people from struggling regions. Divisive questions that would have made him an easy target were studiously avoided.

Many businesses make the opposite mistake, cataloguing their services in exhaustive detail while neglecting the questions that actually matter. Effective communication begins with two rather more focused inquiries: what is the most pressing problem our customers face, and how do we solve it?

Magyar possessed a decisive advantage: he knew the system from the inside. As a former confidant within Orbán’s circle, he understood precisely how Fidesz operated and could identify its weaknesses before anyone else.

A rigorous analysis of the competitive landscape is rarely wasted. Not to imitate rivals, but to locate the niches they have overlooked – topics nobody raises, tones nobody dares adopt, audiences who feel invisible. That is where the opportunity lies.

Two years ago, Péter Magyar was a political nobody. Today he is Hungary’s prime minister. (Photo: B. Molnár Béla, Wikimedia Commons)

Magyar had almost no access to Hungary’s mainstream media, which had long been brought under government control. One of the keys to his success was the so-called “Tisza Islands”: local groups that formed without central direction and carried the movement into every corner of the country. For political scientist Anne Applebaum, it was precisely this – the construction of a broad, diverse, grassroots coalition – that constituted the true engine of his victory.

The implication for small businesses is clear. Customers who feel respected and understood tend to become advocates, sharing their experiences without being asked. Cultivating existing and former clients is at least as valuable as chasing new ones.

Magyar did not wait for the perfect moment – but he recognised it when it arrived. When the pardoning of a man convicted of covering up the abuse of children in state care sent shockwaves through Hungarian society in early 2024, he stepped forward within hours.

Launching an offer, a service or a message before the audience is ready carries its own risks. A product may be excellent; without a genuine, felt need on the customer’s side, it will struggle to find traction. Patient observation, a willingness to listen and the capacity to act quickly when the moment comes are, in their own way, as important as the product itself.

Magyar won with a two-year-old party and no established apparatus against a regime that had consolidated power over sixteen years. Not because he had more money. Because he was closer to people, occupied the right ground and built genuine connections.

When the owners of small businesses argue that they cannot communicate more effectively for want of budget, they are, in a sense, making a different admission: that they have not yet grasped that proximity cannot be purchased. Large corporations spend fortunes trying to simulate precisely what a small business already has for nothing – a human voice, a recognisable face, a credible story.

That is not a small difference.