It's Valentine's Day and the co-creators of Business Model YOU are happily receiving their first editions of this ground-breaking new workbook. The original idea was really simple; apply the creativity of Business Model Generation to individuals and their careers. The result would be a Personal Business Model (PBM).

On the surface, it is that easy. What caught us by surprise was actually working with a Personal Business Model was not at all like working with an organizational Business Model. The difference is that it's easy and fun to brainstorm with a group on what is "out there" in any organization. That process is very different when it's now about what "inside here" or your personally chosen career path. The  9 model elements of career reinvention are almost the same as in business reinvention; but working with them is far more challenging. Helping you through that challenge is what Business Model YOU is all about.

I have come to believe that anyone seeking to be a great organizational Business Model practitioner needs to first understand and work through the Personal Business Model process. There is a forced change in your point of view that improves your ability to now work with organizations in much more meaningful ways. Let's take Valentine's Day as an example.

Valentine's Day is not about who loves you; but is the day you have a chance to appreciate how wonderful it is to have someone in your life you can love. It may not be a spouse; but a friend, associate, or even pet that shares your life. The important thing is that there seems to be a purpose to love another built inside every one of us and on this day we take the time to find some way to express to them, in some way they will appreciate, how much this means to us.

Those relationships are not missed in Business Model YOU. It looks at the impacts of our career purpose and multiple roles in life. Then we need to deal with the Customer Relationship element of our Business Model. Everyone working with Business Models knows the two basic Customer Relationships that we enter into this block, Acquisition or Retention. What gets stressed in Business Model YOU is that this is not from the organization's perspective, it's from your Customer's. The real question here is how do our Customers want us to relate to them?

Because almost every organization has spent time on CRM, we are oriented to thinking how we want to relate to our customers; but that is backwards. How does our customer want us to relate to them? In spite of what all the Facebook consultants tell me to believe, I have no desire to be in a Retention relationship with, let's say my plumber (and "like" their Facebook page). I want them to be easily Acquired when I need them (and appear a the top of my Google search on demand). On the other hand, I may want my doctor to want me to "like" his Facebook page and to take an interest in what is going on in my life.

Today I am reminded how personal and important these relationships are. Because I have worked on Personal Business Models I also see the relevance to all Business Models in a way that was obscure before.

To all those who have been a part of this rewarding effort, Happy Valentine's Day.

_Buying a Business is a high risk step for the new business owner. While developing the materials for Business Model You, it became apparent that many of those who take the time to create a Personal Business Model end up considering entrepreneurship. To keep the book on focus, the authors decided that this was a new topic and those interested in it should consult additional materials.

We supplement the book in our Career Reinvention Workshops with information about small business ownership, buying a franchise, and other career alternatives. In the spirit of Self Discovery and then Customer Discovery, we use a short test in the Workshops that reveals at least one critical aspect of business ownership personality, Grit.

Anyone considering owning their own business should take a moment to examine their "Grittiness" with a Grit test.The Grit idea comes from the work of University of Pennsylvania researcher Angela Duckworth. She has been able to find that a determining quality for the success of a student is their ability to stay on focus. This may be far more important than what standardized entrance examinations try to measure such as intelligence, knowledge, and/or creativity.

Grit is a difficult quality to describe. My mother, who was born in the area of Europe that was formerly East Prussia, is fond of telling us she has Prussian determination, while others are simply stubborn. She is an incredible entrepreneur, continuing to create value for others even with the physical limitations of being 75. She just keeps going and that has been an inspiration to everyone who knows her.

Grit is a personal determination that is different from stubbornness. The difference is that Grit has purpose, stubbornness only has a past. Before taking the leap of buying a business, it's worthwhile to do a bit of Self Discovery. Click here to download the 12 question Duckworth Grit Questionnaire for yourself.

If you find you have Grit, the question then becomes why? Do you have a purpose that could be fulfilled in your own business? Then buying a business makes great sense. Perhaps that Grit is for another purpose, such as a leadership position in a larger organization (which may not be a for-profit organization). Your Personal Business Model will help here.

Those scoring lower on the Grit scale still have purpose; however, it may be important to associate yourself with another leader in a more supportive role. Buying a business is not for everyone.

_Overview
A new Executive Advocate program helps small business owners in Texas achieve rapid results that multiplies their business valuation. The program uncovers the gaps in value drivers and maps their closure.

Problem Encountered
A small business owner had grown tried of her business (Burn Out) and was seeking more interesting opportunities. We were asked to evaluate the potential of selling the business. At that time EBITDA was $113,827. A business valuation, based on the Murphy Business Broker Opinion of Value (BOV) technology, was used to create a baseline value.

The problem facing this business owner was existing debt, which roughly equaled the BOV results. To sell the business now would mean losing her current job, paying off the debt,  and then having no funds to build the next job or to retire. The business needed a higher cash flow to pay down the debt and increase the selling price. Then the owner would have sufficient capital for her future plans.

Our Solution
Murphy Business Services was engaged to develop a Strategic Marketing Execution Map (SMEM). Business owners are engaged in many activities; but not all of them drive business values. The SMEM approach looks at those business functions and defines gaps between current performance and desired performance.

In this case, activities related to cash flow were causing the gaps. The owner already had many ideas on how to generate additional revenues, reduce the cost of goods sold, and better manage overhead expenses. When faced with defining performance gaps, these ideas solidified into tasks and goals that could be directed to the staff.

Results
The power of an organization with goals everyone understands cannot be understated. Having a Business Model everyone understands produces results. Increased revenues, better margins, reduced overheads all worked together to increase cash flow. In less than a year, this same business had an EBITDA $221,578, an increase of $107,751.

To understand how this effects the business valuation, it's important to understand that value is related to the risks involved in a change of business owners. Doubling the EBITDA will double the value no matter what multiples are used!

If the business is generating a cash flow from its internal systems, it's worth much more than one that relies on the skills of it owner. This area was also a gap identified by the SMEM. With new systems in place, this business also represented a reduced risk for a business buyer, raising the appropriate EBITDA multiples. In fact. the business valuation more than doubled and finding interested acquirers was easy.

The new problem facing this business owner is what to do after selling the business. Now that values are climbing so she can finance many business opportunities, which one should she pursue? She is currently engaged in an Executive Advocate Reinvention program that develops a Personal Business Model for her to use in deciding on her next career step.

An online Contact Us form is available to specifically request more information about Executive Advocate programs appropriate to your career situation.

_Customer Discovery is the process of having potential customers review your Personal Business Model and finding out if you really have a market, or just an idea that excites only you. Seeking investors before you have a proven your market is not only difficult, but if successful, the business is often lost to those same investors.

Finding sources of small business financing at this stage is often a better alternative than finding investors. Some businesses will eligible for term loans, such as the Small Business Administration backed loans offered through banks. Generally, all term loans, such as SBA notes or mortgages, are secured with collateral. A business still in the customer discovery phase may be short of collateral which is why many  business owners often jump right to finding investors. However, there is another alternative, the unsecured business line of credit.

A warning is needed here. Even though a business line of credit is not secured with specific collateral, it will still require the personal guarantees of the business owners, as do most other sources of small business financing. The advantages of an unsecured business line of credit over a term loan are:

1. They are based on the creditworthiness (FICO scores) of the borrower and not the value of a secured asset; And
2. You only pay interest on what is actually borrowed. As borrowed funds are paid back, not only is interest reduced but your credit "reserve" is increased.

The amount of funding you will need can determine the the sources for an unsecured credit line. There are two general approaches.

Business Credit Cards

A credit card is a line of credit. Credit card strategies are often used for amounts up to $100,000 (sometimes more). Lenders will issue these to business owners; however, there are many considerations to a credit card strategy, including cost and impact on the owner's personal FICO score. Consider using a business credit card consultant to assist in the development of an appropriate strategy for your specific situation.

Business Line of Credit

A line of credit arrangement with a lender becomes appropriate for amounts over $100,000. These can range as high as several million dollars as long as the creditworthiness of the owners and the use of funds support it. The costs are somewhat higher than term loans and typically lower than pure credit cards. Unsecured business lines of credit went away during the banking crisis; however, sources, such as eFund Solutions, are starting to appear for small business financing.

Raising cash through selling equity has it's place, especially in financing ongoing growth. However, selling ownership can be too expensive at the wrong time. Consider alternative sources.

It sounds odd; but first we Grow Up and then we Grow Down. We spend 30 to 60 years accumulating relationships, skills, knowledge, assets, and responsibilities, only to have them successively removed until at the end of another 30 to 60 years we leave with nothing. That's assuming everything has worked out well; but even working out well doesn't seem to be in today's forecast.

Our culture prepares us to grow up. As we become capable, opportunities to expand our purposes are presented to us. We become used to "adding" more to our lives, a family, friends, an education, a career, our own family, financial and other assets. The challenge is adjusting to adding onto yet another part of our lives. But somewhere at some point, we all shockingly find ourselves losing an unrecoverable part of our life.

It could be loss of a career, a loved one, financial assets, or even our health. Not an opportunity to move on; but a real unrecoverable loss. Years of growing up leave us completely unprepared. No one has ever taught us how to handle the challenges of going "downhill".

If life has a purpose (and we all have to take a position of this), then we are faced with the conclusion that this process is one of personal focus. Life narrows itself to focus us on our extended purposes. Removing any significant piece of our personal life system causes everything else to lose its former purpose. The resulting emotional turmoil is often debilitating.

The process of Personal Reinvention has helped many facing this life crisis. Some have worked through this themselves, others have taken advantage of self-help, and many are now trying Personal Reinvention Workshops. The methods start with the remaining pieces (resources) and views them through the lens of your life history. A new, more focused, purpose can emerge if you seek it.

Although we use Personal Business Models as our tool, the results may not relate to business at all. We often find our purpose in service to others. Finding that service will put the meaning into Growing Down.

Reinvention is a basic Life Skill we all need. While working on the Personal Business Model materials for Business Model You I had adults going through a life crisis in mind. As I have been involved in the development of that Reinvention process, I now keep finding more applications.

Here I am speaking to the Tri Delta sorority at UTA as a part of their Academic development program. This was not just about how you can make better grades; but why you would want to.

Everyone agrees, you make better grades in courses that are interesting to you. The place to start improving academic performance may not be study methods.  Start by understanding what will cause any course to be interesting to YOU. To be interesting, the material has to have some personal meaning.

After an initial exercise, it was easy to demonstrate at the seminar that everyone is a unique mixture of useful, often unknown, attributes. Why is that? I believe it's because we all have a unique purpose. Reinvention is about rediscovering and re-centering on that unique purpose. The sorority is a wonderful place for students in one of life's biggest transitions to help each other identify their unique attributes and discover how these fit together to form a Purpose statement. For some of them, it was easy. For others, it will develop over time.

As statements of purpose become evident, it becomes easier to link Key Activities, in this case academic work, to what means something to YOU. Instead of being concerned about what you have to do for a class, consider what does this class have to teach you to help achieve your purpose? Knowing that is the game-changer.

I started thinking game-changing was all about working with business organizations. Wrong, it's a fundamental of life we all need to personally master.

The 70's Best Seller, Future Shock, predicted that by now the social changes brought about by advancing technology would leave us all in a state of "shattering stress and disorientation". This is not a bad way to describe how the career displacement and burnout so many experience feels. The good news is that the future has also produced a way to deal with it - Personal Reinvention and to achieve that, Personal Business Models.

Personal Business Models are an outgrowth of the organizational Business Modeling techniques complied in the best selling workbook, Business Model Generation. Self-described as "a handbook for visionaries, game changers, and challengers ...", the manual introduces a new tool, the Business Model Canvas, as a way to visualize the dynamics of how an organization supports itself. The canvas then becomes a place to create possible futures and judge their effectiveness. The process is both engaging and enlightening, which has lead to its international popularity.

It would seem that applying this technique to an individual could be equally as engaging and enlightening, and another international community has been developing that idea which will be available in early 2012 when Business Model YOU will be published. The deliverable here is a version of the canvas called a Personal Business Model.

While developing an organizational model has many similarities to the Personal Business Model, they start in very different places. The heart of any organization is the market it serves and the value it gives to its customers. Without giving value to customers, there is no reason for the organization to exist.

You and I are different. We exist anyway. Why is that? The heart of a Personal Business Model is an answer to that question. An organization develops or utilizes whatever resources it needs to deliver a value. We have our natural and earned resources without regard to any value proposition. What are we supposed to do with them? Starting here is the challenge of developing a Personal Business Model.

Once your purpose has been articulated and applied to your career using the methodologies in the book, its time to investigate possible change. Your current situation can (and most likely will) change. Business Model YOU  teaches you ways to move your perspective and see what happens. Reinvented career possibilities can then be tested and validated. A new way to finance life will emerge.

Yes, the times are disrupting everything as Future Shock predicted. What used to work in our lives may have already stopped working. If not, it's in danger of that. Change is being forced on us, like it or not. A Personal Business Model provides a purpose-based basis for discovering how to reinvent yourself in meaningful ways to address a new future.

A warning, its not easy. The book will take the reader on a careful step-by-step journey of self-discovery and then reinvention. For many, the book alone will be sufficient. Others will struggle on their own. For those, Personal Business Model workshops are becoming available. Either way, all of us will face Reinventing our futures more and more. It's now a part of life.

_Baby Boomers were proud to be a generation of change in their youth. They also thought they would be able to retire just like their parents did; but that just isn't going to happen. They're still going to be leaders of changing ways, like it or not.

Retirement planning based on historical stock market growth isn't working. The up-and-down sideways movement of investments are being described as "the new normal" by today's analysts. Savings are not going to allow for most employed Baby Boomers to retire with the same financial assurance they had assumed. Rising health costs, especially for aging Americans, are also making Baby Boomers an attractive target for corporate downsizing. So what can they do when faced with being unable to retire and rapidly becoming unemployable?

The Emotional Challenge is also the Opportunity

There is an emotional dynamic to seeking retirement. Most look forward to it when they're just tired. Not physically exhausted; but emotionally tired of facing issues they cannot resolve day after day. Counselors call it career burnout. The opposite of burnout is career engagement. That's what everyone really wants. Something in our lives that gives us meaningful work as well as income. We enjoy facing problems every day that we are good at solving.

Here is the opportunity. As Business Brokers we know that at any given time 10% to 20% of small business owners in any category are ready to sell their business. Why? They're just tired. It's not that business is bad. Burnout is everywhere. The opportunity is to first find what will engage you; and then find the person who is experiencing burnout doing that because it should be you doing it rather than them. This is easily seen with business ownership and is the strategy we use in the Executive Advocate program for individuals; but the effect is everywhere. The business model approach can be used by anyone, even if it doesn't lead to starting or buying a business.

Business Model YOU

A community of international business and human resource advisers are completing a Do It Yourself Reinvention manual for release early in 2011. The title is Business Model YOU, after the best selling manual, Business Model Generation. Once available, anyone can work through a systematic approach to discover their career engagement opportunities and develop an approach to making a living with them. Tim Clark has written several introductions to the Business Model YOU process. Jumpstarting your career is a high level overview; and there is another where he likens it to working on an MPA, a Masters of Personal Administration.

Those in North Texas are also able to attend Personal Business Model Workshops.  These introduce Personal Business Models and then the development of your own Personal Brand by applying life experiences to your model. From that perspective, it's easier to see if any opportunity under consideration makes good business sense. The results can be a simple as a renewed perspective of a current position to opening-up entirely career vistas.

A Reinvention Community

At 25 or 30 it's easy to start a venture and not worry too much about it. If things don't work out, it's good experience and there is plenty of time for another career. Baby Boomers don't have that luxury. A career transition at this point in life has to work. There cannot be too much put into mitigating the risk. In addition to the individual programs and small group workshops already mentioned, an online community can provide valuable feedback. Recognizing this growing need, the AARP has started one they call The Reinvention Group. There is no cost to join. Expect to find many more over time.

Reinventing yourself at over 50 starts as a scary proposition; but if done with care, it succeeds in being the right thing at the right time. Consider how much of America's wisdom and experience is contained within the Baby Boomers. Not only do they financially and emotionally need to stay engaged, our country still badly needs them

Career burn-out is inescapable when the individual and their job have become mismatched. This insidious condition presents itself with 6 well known symptoms.
1)  No time - The demands of your work exceed your capacity to handle it.
2) No authority - Others have control over you.
3) No rewards - Money and recognition have become insufficient.
4) No community - You are becoming more and more isolated in your job.
5) Unfair to You - You are being treated unfairly
6) Unfair to Others - You are being asked to treat others in ways you believe to be unfair.

There is a mistaken belief that these are symptoms of someone who just isn't "tough" enough to make it in the real world. A problem with career burn-out is that by the time the misalignment between your strengths and your career has reduced your effectiveness, your self esteem has also been worn to the point you start believing this fable. Rounds of renewed personal effort continue as your career leads nowhere.

Starting a career change is tough. It means going into the unknown without any assurance that life will actually get better. Most don't have the heart for it unless pushed by circumstances (like a health problem or job loss). But it is possible to match yourself to your career. A powerful way to do this to see yourself as a personal business.

You don't need to quit your job to begin the process. The new guide being published in early 2012, Business Model You, goes through the process. For those tried of working for others, Business Franchise counselors also offer similar guidance in examining your personal business strengths. In the end, everyone needs answers to not only what you do and how you do it, but most importantly, why.

I was reading Exodus 20 this morning and saw that things really haven't changed. With apologies to the original author............

I A business career is the vehicle used to accomplish life goals. Never allow it to be the driver.
II. Keep in mind the image of who you really are. This is leads to your life's purpose, not a collection of status symbols.
III. Money is necessary; but it also leads to vanity. Learn to recognize when you are "in vain".
IV. Find a way to rest and recover and religiously keep it separate from business. The penalty is early burn-out.
V. There are always new business opportunities but family opportunities will never repeat. Honor them.
VI.Competition is about making you and your business better, never about killing others.
VII. Your commitment to your mate is singular. You cannot have it and another primary relationship, either with another person or a business career.
VIII. You will know if an act is stealing. Even if successful, you now have to live with a thief you cannot trust.
IX. Personal integrity will carry you through the most difficult of circumstances. It's always a mistake to trade it for a momentary career convenience.
X. Even if the grass on the other side of the fence is greener, it's not your grass. Take pride in your grass and that focus will drive your success.

There is a spiritual side to career reinvention. This isn't religion, which is a belief system. Spirituality is deriving meaning from life experiences.  The development of a Personal Business Model uses very modern approaches to help us find that meaning from our lives; however, the importance of meaning in life is both sacred and centuries old. It's always comforting to see the connections between where we are trying to go and where mankind has always been.