Business Model myself

Today I started working on the personal business model canvas. In the past I already had the chance to work on the business model canvas as part of a workshop, while I was working at a startup accelerator in Cologne, called STARTPLATZ. But the personal version of the canvas was actually new to me.

Example of the Personal Business Model Canvas

While working on the personal business model canvas I found out that I have a lot of factors in my environment that influence my life and which give my life its direction. Besides of my studies I work part time at PwC and do some work for my dad’s company like setting up a new website. In addition there are of course factors like family and friends, but I recognized while working on the canvas that it’s not clear to me all the time how many factors influence my life all day.

The canvas proved my impression that I like to work on a personal level rather than to communicate via mail or text messages. This was proved by the channels that I mentioned I the canvas, because all these channels were on a personal basis to the ones that I work with.

Besides that every persons needs to do changes to himself over time in order to develop his skills I think that I already decided to do some basic changes before I started my master studies. In comparison to the past I am way more ambitious. That’s why I actually set high goals to myself that I’m willing to reach with last consequence. But as I mentioned before you have to adjust yourself all the time in order to satisfy the requirement of your environment. Only by doing this you’re able to reach high goals. In contrast to the basic changes I mentioned before these adjustments are continuous and are emerging from time to time but you must have the ability to recognize them.

To find a business leader which is similar to me is a pretty tough challenge, because all those million dollar startup leaders are people who have exceptional abilities and I can’t put myself on a stage with these people. So what I basically did to find one leader is to think about which persons really fascinates me and which attribute I wish to have in the future. While thinking about this I come up with Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, a company which builds space launch vehicles. 

Elon Musk

What I really admire is his courage to start working on all this, lets call it “special”, ideas. If you think of building a total new company which produces electronics cars. By doing this you know that you will get in competition with all these big car manufacturers who build classic cars and have a couple decades of experience. But what he did is to face this rivalry and to make his own thing. At this point I better don’t start of talking about SpaceX because if anybody tells you such an idea you will say that this is totally insane. But again, he did what was his dream. This is what impresses me a lot, his irrepressible courage. So if I have to name one leader which is hopefully similar to me, maybe not at this point but in future, I would name Elon Musk.