Business Model You: A One-Page Method For Reinventing Your Career [Brossura]

I just gave a presentation of this book to Master's students at a business school and they found the framework most interesting. In particular, seeing yourself as your own company gives you a holistic picture of what's important in any career move. The canvas identifies your strengths and weaknesses to your approach in reaching your career goals. It also provides an interesting handout to use in informational interviewing.

If I had only one book to pick for career hunting I would use "What Color is your Parachute". There is a reason it has sold 10 million copies. I've used it in three major career moves and the results I've achieved make it one of the most influential books I've ever read.

BMY is more useful for you the more work experience you have. It has good use cases based on individuals who have applied it in their own life. Do to its high-level approach I consider it a good addition to the "Parachute book", but not a substitute.

Business Model Generation has been useful for me as a business consultant because I could easily communicate the "story" of any business a client who might be considering changing or buying it. When the community was asked if we wanted to participate in a project to apply this tool to individuals, I readily agreed.

I was expecting to be discussing the mechanics of things like defining Customer Segments for an individual as opposed to an organization. Yes we did that. Every organization has customers or they wouldn't exist. It's typical to start an organizational business model here. But people exist without customers, so where would we base an individual's model? Really interesting stuff; but not yet life changing.

Then the development of Business Model YOU totally surprised me when it began to take a Spiritual (not Religious) turn. Something is Spiritual in my life if it has personal meaning to me. That meaning started to surface when we considered every Business Model to be a kind of blueprint; and agreed that every blueprint is created by an architect to achieve some purpose. To really architect a Business Model for your career, there needs to be some understanding to of your life's purpose.

Suddenly finding, communicating, and creating attractive values for customers became simple compared to finding values that relate my career to my personal purpose. This is really hard work and Tim Clark, the book's author, never tried to dance around it. With surprising simplicity, he took us beyond the modeling world and into ways of looking at our careers as a fulfillment of our personal purposes.

I then realized this is what my clients really wanted when looking at a business. The answer to their concerns was more in their Personal Business Model than in the organization's under consideration. My perception of who I am and why I do things has changed. I am no longer the same person.

Funny, the Business Model YOU experience has changed my perspective on every organizational model as well. Having been through this work, you have an expanded intuition about changing the perspectives on all of the Business Model segments. You will never see personal careers or organizations the same way again. You will never be the same person either.

Bob Fariss - co-creator Business Model YOU, Fort Worth Texas

People drifting from job to job may soon realize that they've visited the same crossroads too many times. Changing careers is tough, but some job seekers may be tired of compromises which would only lead to the same suboptimal choices they've experienced in the past. While others may seek to become just employable, these rare and brave souls seek to be remarkable and relevant.

The truth is that they already are. We all are, in fact. And now, there's a way to tap into that greatness and bring it into the present.

In the spirit of Alexander Osterwalder's successful book Business Model Generation (BMG), Tim Clark (who was also BMG's editor) has written Business Model You: A One Page Method for Reinventing Your Career. Clark shows that you can use the same business model thinking from BMG to unearth your greatest strengths, talents, and interests, and then paint them onto a powerful blueprint.

Business Model You was co-created between 328 entrepreneurial minds spread out over 43 countries. The book is a beautifully designed and succinctly written journey replete with each contributor's diverse experiences and insight. The common theme is that everyone involved in producing the book struggled, but ultimately succeeded, in reinventing themselves. Their stories will help you create your personal business model.

What's a business model? In short, it's "the logic by which any organization sustains itself financially." Likewise, the Business Model "canvas" is a structured but simple visual technique which shows how the nine most important components of any business model fit and flow together. First, the original canvas is introduced for enterprises before being translated to the world of the individual.

Business Model You is also an itinerary of thought experiments, anecdotes, and exercises to help align work with purpose. Some of the many experiments include the Lifeline Discovery and Holland's Six Tendencies. This journey of self-knowledge really counts, because aside from financial sustainability and survival, this is a book about thriving and doing the kind of work that resonates at your core.

It certainly takes a culture of change and innovation, but the first spark always begins with one person: You.