The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur

Trying to start a business in this economy? Struggling with little or no cash? Have no experience, no baseline to judge your progress against? Whether you’re just starting out or have been at it for years, the Toilet Paper Entrepreneur's "get real", actionable approach to business is a much-needed swift kick in the pants.

Each year Americans start one million new businesses, nearly 80 percent of which fail within the first five years. Under such pressure to stay alive—let alone grow—it’s easy for entrepreneurs to get caught up in a never-ending cycle of “sell it—do it, sell it—do it” that leaves them exhausted, frustrated, and unable to get ahead no matter how hard they try. This is the exact situation Mike Michalowicz found himself in when he was trying to grow his first company. Although it was making steady money, there was never very much left over and he was chasing customers left and right, putting in twenty-eight-hour days, eight days a week. The punishing grind never let up. His company was alive but stunted, and he was barely breathing. That’s when he discovered an unlikely source of inspiration—pumpkin farmers. After reading an article about a local farmer who had dedicated his life to growing giant pump­kins, Michalowicz realized the same process could apply to growing a business. He tested the Pumpkin Plan on his own company and transformed it into a remarkable, multimillion-dollar industry leader. First he did it for himself. Then for others. And now you. So what is the Pumpkin Plan? Plant the right seeds: Don’t waste time doing a bunch of different things just to please your customers. Instead, identify the thing you do better than anyone else and focus all of your attention, money, and time on figuring out how to grow your company doing it. Weed out the losers: In a pumpkin patch small, rotten pumpkins stunt the growth of the robust, healthy ones. The same is true of customers. Figure out which customers add the most value and provide the best opportunities for sustained growth. Then ditch the worst of the worst. Nurture the winners: Once you figure out who your best customers are, blow their minds with care. Discover their unfulfilled needs, innovate to make their wishes come true, and overdeliver on every single promise. Full of stories of other successful entrepreneurs, The Pumpkin Plan guides you through unconven­tional strategies to help you build a truly profitable blue-ribbon company that is the best in its field.

Author of cult classics The Pumpkin Plan and The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur offers a simple, counterintuitive cash management solution that will help small businesses break out of the doom spiral and achieve instant profitability. Conventional accounting uses the logical (albeit, flawed) formula: Sales - Expenses = Profit. The problem is, businesses are run by humans, and humans aren't always logical. Serial entrepreneur Mike Michalowicz has developed a behavioral approach to accounting to flip the formula: Sales - Profit = Expenses. Just as the most effective weight loss strategy is to limit portions by using smaller plates, Michalowicz shows that by taking profit first and apportioning only what remains for expenses, entrepreneurs will transform their businesses from cash-eating monsters to profitable cash cows. Using Michalowicz's Profit First system, readers will learn that: · Following 4 simple principles can simplify accounting and make it easier to manage a profitable business by looking at bank account balances. · A small, profitable business can be worth much more than a large business surviving on its top line. · Businesses that attain early and sustained profitability have a better shot at achieving long-term growth. With dozens of case studies, practical, step-by-step advice, and his signature sense of humor, Michalowicz has the game-changing roadmap for any entrepreneur to make money they always dreamed of.

"Never started a company before? Struggling with little or no cash? Have no experience, no baseline to judge your progress against? Thank God! You've got a shot at making this work." So says Mike Michalowicz, author of The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur, a business book that is so uniquely useful, so raw and entertaining, it reads like the brainchild of Steve Jobs and Chris Rock.The founder of three multimillion-dollar companies, including Obsidian Launch, a company that partners with first-time entrepreneurs to grow their concepts into industry leaders, Mike Michalowicz knows what it really takes to spin your great idea into pure gold.Whether you're just starting out or have been at this for years, Mike's "get real" approach to business is a much-needed swift kick in the pants. In this book, you'll discover:* Why a business plan is a total waste of your time.* Why fulfilling your own needs is the first and last order of business. * Which three sheets of paper you need to successfully launch, manage and grow your business.* How to get started in business with little or no money.* How to find and exploit resources that no one else knows about.* How to stop procrastinating and take action NOW!

This fundamental guide on programmatic advertising explains in detail how automated, data-driven advertising really works in practice and how the right adoption leads to a competitive advantage for advertisers, agencies and media. The new way of planning, steering and measuring marketing may still appear complex and threatening but promising at once to most decision makers. This collaborative compendium combines proven experience and best practice in 22 articles written by 45 renowned experts from all around the globe. Among them Dr. Florian Heinemann/Project-A, Peter Würtenberger/Axel-Springer, Deirdre McGlashan/MediaCom, Dr. Marc Grether/Xaxis, Michael Lamb/MediaMath, Carolin Owen/IPG, Stefan Bardega/Zenith, Arun Kumar/Cadreon, Dr. Ralf Strauss/Marketingverband, Jonathan Becher/SAP and many more great minds.

Do you worry that your business will collapse without your constant presence? Are you sacrificing your family, friendships, and freedom to keep your business alive? What if instead your business could run itself, freeing you to do what you love when you want, while it continues to grow and turn a profit? It’s possible. And it's easier than you think. If you're like most entrepreneurs, you started your business so you could be your own boss, make the money you deserve, and live life on your own terms. In reality, you're bogged down in the daily grind, constantly putting out fires, answering an endless stream of questions, and continually hunting for cash. Now, Mike Michalowicz, the author of Profit First and other small-business bestsellers, offers a straightforward step-by-step path out of this dilemma. In Clockwork, he draws on more than six years of research and real life examples to explain his simple approach to making your business ultra-efficient. Among other powerful strategies, you will discover how to: Make your employees act like owners: Free yourself from micromanaging by using a simple technique to empower your people to make smart decisions without you. Pinpoint your business's most important function: Unleash incredible efficiency by identifying and focusing everyone on the one function that is most crucial to your business. Know what to fix next: Most entrepreneurs try to fix every inefficiency at once and end up fixing nothing. Use the "weakest link in the chain" method to find the one fix that will add the most value now. Whether you have a staff of one, one hundred, or somewhere in between, whether you're a new entrepreneur or have been overworked and overstressed for years, Clockwork is your path to finally making your business work for you.

From Mike Michalowicz, the author of PROFIT FIRST, CLOCKWORK, and THE PUMPKIN PLAN, comes the ultimate diagnostic tool for every entrepreneur. The biggest problem entrepreneurs have is that they don't know what their biggest problem is. If you find yourself trapped between stagnating sales, staff turnover, and unhappy customers, what do you fix first? Every issue seems urgent -- but there's no way to address all of them at once. The result? A business that continues to go in endless circles putting out urgent fires and prioritizing the wrong things. Fortunately, Mike Michalowicz has a simple system to help you eradicate these frustrations and get your business moving forward, fast. Mike himself has lived through the struggles and countless distractions of entrepreneurship, and devoted years to finding a simple way to pinpoint exactly where to direct attention for rapid growth. He figured out that every business has a hierarchy of needs, and if you can understand where you are in that hierarchy, you can identify what needs immediate attention. Simply fix that one thing next, and your business will naturally and effortlessly level-up. Over the past decade, Mike has developed an ardent following for his funny, honest, and actionable insights told through the stories of real entrepreneurs. Now, Fix This Next offers a simple, unique, and wildly powerful business compass that has already helped hundreds of companies get to the next level, and will do the same for you. Immediately.

From Mike Michalowicz, bestselling author of Profit First, Clockwork, and Fix This Next, a practical and proven guide to standing out in a crowded market. Many business owners are frustrated because they feel invisible in a crowded marketplace. They know they are better than their competitors, but when they focus on that fact, they get little in return. That's because, to customers, better is not actually better. Different is better. And those who market differently, win. In his new marketing book, Mike Michalowicz offers a proven, no-bullsh*t method to position your business, service, or brand to get noticed, attract the best prospects, and convert those opportunities into sales. Told with the same humor and straight-talk that's gained Michalowicz an army of ardent followers, with actionable insights drawn from stories of real life entrepreneurs, this book lays out a simple, doable system based on three critical questions every entrepreneur and business owner must ask about their marketing: 1. Does it differentiate? 2. Does it attract? 3. Does it direct? Get Different is a game-changer for everyone who struggles to grow because their brand, message, product or service doesn't stand out and connect with customers--the long-anticipated answer to the defining business challenge of our time.