Business Model You

Most job-hunters who fail to find their dream job fail not because they lack information about the job market, but because they lack information about themselves,” says Dick Bolles, author of What Color is Your Parachute?, the English-language career guide that’s been a top-seller for the past 40 years.5 Dream jobs are more often created than found, so they’re rarely attainable through conventional searches. Creating one requires strong self-knowledge.

We’re not claiming that people are the same as companies. But here’s an important parallel: You, like many companies, are affected by environmental and economic factors beyond your control.
That being the case, how can you maintain success and satisfaction? You must identify how you operate — and then adapt your approach to fit changing environments.
The skills you’ll learn from Business Model You — how to describe and think clearly about business models — will give you the power to do that.

As the term suggests, it ordinarily describes businesses. Our approach, however, asks you to consider yourself a one-person business. Then, it helps you define and modify your “personal business model” — the way you engage your strengths and talents to grow personally and professionally.

“Each of us carries within a secret yearning—a yearning that, as time and life march on, often becomes a secret sorrow. That yearning will be different for each of us, as it is the most deeply longed-for expression of self. Only to the degree that we — each of us — are able to bring forth our own heart’s core will our lives feel fulfilled, truly worthwhile.”
— George Kinder8

But, while people certainly do change and adapt over time, research suggests that our core personality traits, passions, and interests remain relatively stable from childhood onward.7

hobbies, sports, extracurricular events, or school subjects — did you enjoy? Recall your natural, uncoerced proclivities.
Think about what kept you absorbed for hours and made you happily oblivious to the rest of the world. What tasks made time fly?
Write down your thoughts on the following page.

Think back to any time before you were 20 years old:
What did you love to do?
What activities — games, hob

One problem with others’ expectations, though, is that we might adopt them as our own; a desire for social acceptance can easily overwhelm our internal compasses.

Answering the “Who Am I?” Question

then take a different-colored pencil and shade in additional areas representing where they’d like to be within each segment.