Book Review - Business Model You: A One Page Method for Reinventing Your Career

Identifying a viable and profitable business model is a key step in starting a new business. The business model shows how the new business will sustain itself financially; without a solid business model, a new venture is unlikely to succeed. The premise of Business Model You: A One Page Method for Reinventing Your Career is that individuals can benefit from defining their own personal business models, and can use the model as a tool to help reinvent their careers.

The Business Model Canvas

“One Page” refers to the Business Model Canvas, a simple yet effective one-page representation of a business or individual’s business model. Using real-life examples from individuals who have used the tool successfully, the book walks the reader through the process of creating their own Business Model Canvas, which has 9 building blocks as shown below.

For an entrepreneur starting a new business, a one-page business model can be extremely valuable, as it captures the essence of the business on a page, showing the big picture at one glance. But does it work at the individual level?

It absolutely does. Thinking about the work one performs in terms of who the customers are and what value is provided to them in itself is an exercise which can reveal eye-opening insights. If you stopped just at this point, you would have gained perspective and insights well worth the time spent.

The book goes one step further with its promise of a method of reinventing one’s career. How does this work? For an entrepreneur, the Business Model Canvas can be a useful prototyping tool; vary one or more element on the Business Model Canvas, and analyze the impact on the remaining elements. The same holds true for individuals, who can use the Business Model Canvas to prototype changes to their personal business model.

Before any changes however, the book advises reflection and self-discovery. The reality is that a dream career is usually created and not found – and this demands considerable self-knowledge. There are a number of tools the author uses to allow readers to discover their interests, skills and personality. You may choose to use some or all of these, or tools from other sources – but there is no disputing that creating your dream career requires a high level of self-knowledge which must be acquired in some way.

Reinventing

With this self-knowledge in hand, the next step is to reinvent one’s personal business model by coming up with a brand new Business Model Canvas. Changes to any one of the nine elements may require changes in others, so this is an iterative process. For example, if one determined that the Revenue block needed to change in order to generate more income, this could be accomplished by choosing a different set of Customers, or offering a different Value. This in turn would require changes to the Key Activities. With several iterations to refine this, one can arrive at a new personal business model.

The book emphasizes the need for testing the business model, and the necessity to take action based on it. But one of the most insightful chapters has to do with calculating the value that one brings to the organization, and understanding what this means in terms of increased sales to the company. For example – if you are paid a certain amount, you may need to bring in least 2 to 3 times that amount in additional revenue for the company for it to be worth hiring you – possibly more depending on the industry. Most people do not think in these terms – yet there is great value in doing so.

The Business Model You Community

Beyond the book, there is also a online community of Business Model You users at www.businessmodelyou.com. Many of the examples in the book were crowdsourced from the community.  Readers who are looking to connect with other users of the method, looking for inspiration or interested in seeing how others in their domain have used the model may find the community a useful resource. There are also seminars and workshops on the method advertised on the site, which may be of interest to some.

Even if all you get from this book is an understanding of your personal business model and how you  bring value to your customers, it’s well worth the price and the time spent. If it actually does help reinvent your career – that would be an incredible return on your investment.