Mike Michalowicz - The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur (Book)

The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur (Book)

In September 2008, Obsidian Launch released Michalowicz's book The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur. The book has subsequently been translated into multiple foreign languages, such as Spanish, Korean, Czech, Japanese, Polish, Simplified Chinese and Russian. The irreverent book is an entertaining hard-edged read mixed with valuable business lessons from an experienced entrepreneur.

The author argues a successful entrepreneur embodies the flexibility and vision many large companies lack. Michalowicz states that hard-line traditional business planning is ineffective and often detrimental; and that successful growth of a business requires a dynamic planning method, called a 3 Sheet Strategy.

Among other growth techniques, Michalowicz argues the leap frogging strategy of significantly pushing ahead in one "area of innovation", either price, convenience or quality. Michalowicz shows examples of this, including the rise and fall of Blockbuster, Netflix and Redbox.

In The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur, Michalowicz argues that the General Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), while a standard practice for measuring a company's P&L (profit/loss), is in fact detrimental to an entrepreneur's money management. He argues the use of a method he calls Profit First Accounting (PFA) instead of GAAP alone.

In the book, Michalowicz occasionally pulls from his own entrepreneurial background, explaining how funding actually hampered his company's growth. Ultimately it was the lack of investment funds that helped his businesses grow quickly and healthily.

Michalowicz manages a website, also called The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur, with a large volume of resources for entrepreneurs.