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Personal Business Models - Key Partners are the Key

7/3/2013

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Picturephoto credit: Alba Soler Photography cc
Personal Business Models have opened the door for individuals to reinvent themselves in a systematic way. The individual is Resource Constrained, so the process starts with YOU, as opposed to the Market. 

This idea of reinventing while still being limited is not just applicable to individuals. It applies equally to the organization that doesn't need to start-up something new, yet still needs reinvention to turn-around its situation. This will overview 5 short YouTube videos, collectively named the Lean Turn-Around series, that describe this approach to working with Business models. They conclude with a new importance to the role of Key Partners in Personal Business Models.

For those not already familiar with the Business Models canvas, there is a 2 minute introduction to the canvas here and another fast introduction to Personal Business models here. These videos were produced assuming the viewers are already familiar with the book Business Model YOU. The video windows here are small. If you click on the YouTube logo in the lower right corner, they will expand on that site.

Why your idea was worthless

Individuals and Organizations in need of reinvention did not get that way because they were short of ideas. Yet, great ideas alone cannot produce market value. This video introduces Emergent Properties, things that simply don't exist until other things get properly combined. Value doesn't exist at the idea level, so no matter how good an idea might potentially be, more basic elements are needed. In fact two more, which are presented here.

Business Model Deliverables

 Business Model YOU and its Workshops deliver much more than just one or more Personal Business canvases. Insights emerge as you work across the regions of the canvas. An example is given of reinventing a substantial business using the process and tools typically associated with a Personal canvas. Organizational and Personal Business Model Generation processes are then contrasted.

Business Model Processes

After a survey of the dozens of tools available from both processes, focus is given to some feedback tools. This section will be of particular interest to those using Personal Business Models for Personal Branding. Personal and Organizational Models are then connected along with noting a weakness necessary in the Personal (Constrained) Model Generation process.

Business Model Pivots

After going through Design and/or Reflection stages, its time to Redraw the Model and then test and Pivot. Using the canvas regions introduced earlier, Patterns of Pivots can be developed. A and C Pivot types are discussed along with a warning about not working hard on B Pivots early on.

Acting on a Personal Business Model

The conclusion of the series is a focus on how to grow your new Model. Since Personal Business Models start as Constrained, being able to address those constraints become important. It's argued that in addition to Customer Discovery, Key Partner Discovery will be necessary and examples of Key Partner types are shown. Franchise statistics are used to quantify that importance. Those relating Business Models and Networking will find this especially useful.
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7 ways to build a Premium YOU

1/9/2013

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As a business broker, I frequently discuss valuation with interested small business sellers. The discussion often starts like this:

"Tell me about your products(services)?
We have an established reputation for being the best source for what we do in the area.
How is your pricing?
We are competitively priced,not too high and not too low."


Do you see the problem? If a premium Value is really being given the customer, why doesn't that result in a premium Revenue Stream?

This isn't just a problem with a business organization. As individual employees, professionals, or contractors are we providing a real premium value or only enough for a competitive revenue stream? 

The Personal Business Model canvas developed in Business Model YOU not only helps individuals reinvent themselves, it serves as a map for developing the premium aspects of their value. Competitive pricing is the natural result of a focus on primarily the Value Proposition and the Customer Segments. To be worth a premium, further separate YOU from the competition (Professional Branding) by considering your other 7 canvas areas.

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1 - Key Partners
No one works in total isolation. When people look to you as the "point man" for those you work with, they see greater value in everything you do. You get to there by clearly defining that team on the canvas, and then finding ways to promote your partners (even is that doesn't immediately help you). Being able to promote a Key Partner's value increases your own.

2 - Key Activities
We tend to focus on developing those activities which meet our goals; however, people will pay a premium if what you give them helps meets THEIR goals. Would the nature of your Key Activities change if you knew your customer's goals and how to achieve them?

3 - Key Resources
This is the cornerstone of the Personal Business model. Have you identified personal resources you own that are not being used in your model? Finding ways to offer these to your customers increases your value to them, even if it isn't directly related to a main Value Proposition. Do you know about a cheap and easy way to keep up with necessary records? I bet there are potential customers who would love to know how you do it (and love YOU for sharing that).

4 - Cost Structure
Competitive pricing is a result of supply and demand. Non-competitive pricing can happen when either value is high or costs are low. Technology and/or organization often drives down costs and there seems to be no end to the possibilities of using them to reduce costs. When reducing costs leads to additional sales, the premium is in the volume rather than the price.

5 - Customer Relationships
Your relationships are more than just between you and the people who pay you. There is a community that encompasses what is done. Participating in that community is what increases the value of your personal stock in the minds of others in it. Community activity may not result in a direct sale; however, it is very hard for it to not result in increasing your premium value to others.

6 - Channels
We are in an information age and that is changing everything in business. There is a need in every community for participants to band together and share how that effects them and what to do about it. There is always a place to increase value through helping to teach new skills to those seeking them. The fact you teach in any capacity increases your credibility an exposure.

7 - Revenue Streams
Most of us believe a Sale ends when the Revenues are finally collected. Once we realize the single most important source of new business is referrals, it becomes clear that a sale isn't really over until the customer stops making referrals. With this in mind, consider what happens after funds are collected and value is delivered? What could compliment the value transaction 7, 30, 60, 90, or even 180 days later? Anyone who delivers value from this perspective deserves a premium.

The Personal Business Model is a source for continual improvement as well as reinvention. I look forward to more future conversations like:


"How is your pricing?
People understand how valuable we really are to them."
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Personal Business Models and Professional Branding

8/22/2012

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photo credit: stefano principato via photo pin cc
Tired of fighting the same battles to keep your business afloat? One solution is to just let us sell your business.  A better possibility is to generate more cash flow with less effort with Professional Branding.

The new Personal Business Model YOU Workshops at UTA are now being offered as Professional Branding, changed from last term when they were called Career Reinvention. Just another example of the pivoting process that's involved with the implementation of any Business Model. In interviews with those interested in the first workshops, we found a much greater interest from individuals wanting to be more successful in their current careers than those who are looking for another career where they can be more successful. So while the Workshops are equally applicable to both, we have shifted the focus a bit.

There are two mistakes most of us make when first introduced to Business Models and Canvas Thinking. The Workshops covers these (and more) with specific application to your career. 

The first issue is confusing Key Activities with Value Propositions. It's easy to think that our customers value those things that we do so well. The truth is our customers value what helps them do the things they need to get done. An example might be a plumber who feels their master's license is their Value Proposition. The customer's problem may be leaking water, so perhaps 24 hours service will mean much more to them. We need to see our value from our customer's Point of View.

This is easier said than done for career professionals. The Business Model YOU strategy is to start here and to develop what it is we are, so we know what it is we can offer. The same mistake made in the opposite direction is to try and build a career around something you know customers want but is not at all suited for You. Professional Branding requires understanding what makes You valuable, and then communicating it well.

That bring us to the second major mistake most of us make as we develop our Personal Business Models. We confuse Key Activities with Customer Relationships. After a Business Model is completed we need to Act on it. I am open to anyone to disagree with this; but that has to mean Marketing the Model. No matter what other Key Activities are need for Value Proposition fulfillment, Marketing has to also be added to Key Activities and you need to be successful at it for the model to make money. If your model is for yourself as an employee, you still need to market your abilities to either a new employer for a new job, or your boss to enhance your current job. For Professionals, marketing needs to be done to reach new prospects. Every Business Model effort must conclude with Marketing in some form if it is to be meaningful.

So why isn't that Customer Relationships? CRM software vendors and consultants have confused us into thinking that Customer Relationship is about how we want to relate to our customers. That is not the issue. It's how do our customer want to relate to us? While I have Zero Interest in being a part of my plumber's internet community (no matter how many water saving tips may be found there), I do want to be able to quickly find a competent, reasonably priced plumber when water is found where it's not supposed to be. If that's the case, our plumber may find that money spent advertising on Angie's List might be more valuable than mailing out newsletters. On the other hand, I belong to a local health club and I do read their newsletters. I want to relate to them much differently and they get that.

Your Brand is not your name, logo, or company colors. It's how your customers perceive you. To do Professional Branding effectively, it makes good sense to first know what makes you valuable to others and then know how they want to find-out about that. That becomes your "message". Then all that's left is how to send it. There are many books and consultants who can offer you great advice on the mechanics of marketing; but nothing will define your message more clearly than a well constructed Personal Business Model. 

Here is the bonus. At the UTA Professional Branding Workshop we develop your Personal Business Model and in doing so re-engage you with a career that may have been burning-out. Communicating your value to others in ways they want to hear becomes almost intoxicating. You will reinvent "Your Career, for Fun and Profit".


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Growing Down with Personal Reinvention

11/28/2011

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Cycling Down Hill
The Down Hill side can be the most Challenging
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.

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Personal Business Models - Reinventing Yourself and Your Career

9/27/2011

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What would a Business Model of YOU look like?
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 was made available in early 2012 when Business Model YOU was 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.


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Baby Boomers reinventing themselves at over 50

8/21/2011

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reinventing yourself
A 60th birthday reinvention visit to Enchanted Rock
_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

Business Model YOU book cover
To be released in early 2011
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



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6 Career SIgns You're in the Wrong Job

8/8/2011

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Are you stuck in the wrong job?
Ballerina-Soldier from Monster.com
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.

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10 Career Commandments for Executive Reinvention

7/26/2011

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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.


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    Author

    Bob Fariss writes about the issues facing Executives in career development. He teaches Business Model Thinking  and also represents individuals with an entrepreneurial flair seeking to sell, buy, or start-their own business.

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