Comments

• 

  Bob Fariss May 29, 2013 at 4:07pm

  You're on the air. Check your email.
• 

  Bob Fariss May 29, 2013 at 2:59pm

  I can create a Personal Branding website template for you to play with. I just need an email address.
• 

  Bob Fariss May 25, 2013 at 8:36am

  Our conversation yesterday reminded me of a tool I constructed during the development of Business Model YOU that I never actually used. The concept was to teach Canvas Thinking in one session and then for homework have the attendees do the Reflection  exercises.  Session 2 would review the results to develop a Revised canvas. Then for homework, I would have each student develop a Personal Branding website from a BMY-based template. That template is still around at preview.executive-advocate.com/18G9O . It uses an example from an earlier version of BMY that never made it into the final version of the book (poor Janine was upstaged by Megan Lacey).

  I can make copies of this template at no cost to me for each student so on the third session, we would ask each participant to present their personal branding website. The idea was that this would give them a practical basis to "Get Out!" ( BMY page 228). Something like this may be a useful way for you to connect Personal Branding with BMY.

  We didn't actually use this because we couldn't get people to invest in 3 sessions. They felt that was too much.
• 

  Bob Fariss May 24, 2013 at 12:33pm

   If you are adding PBMs SPECIFICALLY to teaching Reach methodologies, it seems reasonable to me for you to consider renaming the canvas components as appropriate for your Models.

  Models are just tools to be used for a purpose and not the real deliverable of BMY, so you aren't changing anything very important.

  Now this raises the question, what is the deliverable? I love the concept from Harvard marketing Prof Theodore Levitt who is quoted as saying, "People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole." If the Personal Business Models are our quarter-inch drills, what are the quarter-inch holes our customers really want?

  Each BMY practitioner needs to answer that for themselves.

  Here is an exercise to try. Get a blank canvas and put a description of your customers in the Customer Segment block. Next put "Teaching Personal Business Models" in the Value proposition. Examine this starting point and complete any other significant components for your practice so that you have a complete model.

  Now move "Teaching Personal Business Models" from the Value Proposition into Key Activities. Now what happens to your model?

  This may help you clarify how to best use BMY in your practice. What you are doing is using Canvas Thinking to reinvent your Profession. I consider the real deliverable of BMG or BMY to be Canvas Thinking. I also have come to believe I learn how to teach it by learning how to apply it to myself. 

  This is a characteristic of BMY innovation that makes it so powerful for me. I can learn on myself. 

  To circle back to Reach, if using their terminology makes it easier for you to teach canvas thinking, you should use it. That's what matters.

  I use canvas thinking all the time, although I rarely use an actual canvas.

  Issues with Revenue Generation and Costs are what creates the pain points driving the need to learn canvas thinking. Without including them, its too easy to use introspection and derive a model that has a warm and fuzzy feeling in our internal world; but no basis in reality. The real world will almost always disagree with our introspection and that will show up in Revenues and/or Costs. Then we need to  wake-up and pivot. Maybe a little every day.
• 

  Bob Fariss May 24, 2013 at 7:39am

  You asked me about Personal Branding and BMY. Here is what I have found.

  When we marketed the Personal Business Model Workshops for adults (not students) we expected there to be interest from those who need to change careers. While that interest was there, there was also high resistance from this customer segment to pay for career reinvention knowledge. My co-ordinator at the University commented that her experience was that people will gladly pay $200,000 for a business venture, but they have always been resistant to paying $199 to determine if they are suitable for it. I have run into the same issue.

  We did notice that the interest we did receive was more from adults who had careers they did not want to change; but they wanted to improve. This was especially true of professional practitioners, such as financial advisors, real estate specialists, and healthcare professionals. They were already happily in business for themselves; but saw in BMY a way to help them distinguish themselves from all the others who seemingly did the same thing. This is still career reinvention; however you are reinventing your current career and not searching for a different one. Canvas thinking is still a valuable approach here.

  We stayed away from the term "Personal Branding" because that means promoting your NAME. We have been using the term "Professional Branding" which I don't believe is in common use so it means whatever we want. In our case,  it means promoting your Professional Value Propositions.  I like this term because I believe it makes a difference if you see yourself as a school crossing guard or a professional school crossing guard. The difference is one just goes to work while the other delivers value.

  It's turning out that Key Partners pay a pivotal role in Professional Branding, much more so than with Organizational models. The Professional needs to not only provide value to customers, she needs to be a part of a network of Key Partners to support her efforts. If employed, those generally are found in her company. If self-employed, they need to be cultivated both to enhance the professional value propositions and to act as channels.