Toilet Paper Entrepreneur ‡

Since its after Christmas, and you are probably flush with a bit of holiday cash, and you are ready to start on a new business endeavor…how about about spending some of that money on a book? The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur is small book (175 pages) that cover a lot of ground about starting a business.

Ok, before I start, why might you ask would I review a business book on a tech site?  Two reason: first, most computer books are boring, you probably wouldn’t want to read them even if they were ‘good’. Second, this book is peppered with tips about how to use tech to help run your business on a shoestring budget.

The book’s primary focus is small ‘bootstrapped’ start-ups. If you are  planning a $5MM venture round, while some of the techniques in the book could be useful, you are probably not the focus of this book. On the other hand, if you’ve got an idea for a small business, or you are running small business this book may be for you.

The first two sections of the book cover motivation, and creating a vision of where you want your business to go, while the second part deals with a more nuts and bolts approach to running your business.  If you are just getting started running your business, or trying to decide where you want to go with a business,  this book could be very helpfull to you. Be warned, the author, Mike Michalowicz uses some crude language, so it’s not for the under 16 set, but its very easy to read, and he is able explain concepts well.

Here is the tech tie in, throughout the book there are gray boxes with TPE TIPS, a good number of them deal with Internet tools to help you run your business. Its like a getting an extra bonus in your book.

Whether you get the book or not, the author also has a blog that’s worth reading.

Buy this book at Amazon‡

Sometimes the Internet can open up whole new markets for you. I had the opportunity to talk to a gentleman who runs a small  company that provides hand’s-on training for specialized industrial equipment. He sets up training classes all over the country. About 3 months ago he decided to jump into web based training. He hired a company to  make high quality  training videos, and a programmer to initially setup his site. He priced his classes at a very low price point, and after just one month of being live, he is thrilled with the outcome. In that time he has gotten more new customers than he gets in 4 months for his traditional classes. He told me that he has been able to reach a whole new demographic of customers, (younger, more computer literate). Because of his low price point (under $50.00), if his customers can’t get their employers to pay for the class, many are willing to pay out of their own pockets.

What’s the moral of this story–If you have a business that’s not web based, stop, look around, and see if you can expand  your business with web based technology. Technology that was very expensive just 5 years ago is now very affordable. Technologies like web 2.0, cloud computing, and video are high quality and easily within reach of almost any business. Take a few minutes today and think about what you could do for your business, and then see if you can make it happen. Its probably cheaper and easier then you could ever imagine.

Here are  4 sites worth for  reading for tech news if your not a techie and are running a business:

smallbiztechnology.com. As its name indicates, this is a blog that deals with technology for small business. It has lots and news and tips.

CNET. CNET provides tech news and information in a very non-techie friendly format.

ZDNet. More technical than CNet, but worth a regular review.

irunabiz.com. For obvious reasons.

Leave a comment and let  me know what sites you like to read.

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