“Never been an entrepreneur in your life? Don’t know where to get startup capital? Great! Now’s your chance to get it right,” is how Michael Mickalowitz motivates his readers. Complex concepts from the business world are laid out in simple and clear language with a touch of humor, which makes the book a real find for both first-time entrepreneurs and more experienced businessmen.

Many people who want to start their own business and succeed in it, stops lack of a large initial capital. Most believe that without a good investment their business will not develop. Mike Michalowitz’s book, Startup Without a Budget, teaches you that 3 sheets are enough to have a successful business career. The 10 facts in the book will convince you that you need to read it in its entirety and go achieve business heights.

Mike is a serial businessman, first computer assembly company sold when he was 24. The second, a no-name company, sold to some national player, then a third and a fourth.

A few years ago, when I read this book I thought the whole point could be summed up in two pages – set a goal, go for it with bulldozer tenacity and save on everything you can. To the point of stinginess, to the point of paranoia, to the point of notes on the back of paper already used. But then there was the boom of personal brands and success stories. You know, the whole: wipe out two months and buy a Ferrari or you’re not worth anything. Or open 100,500 branches in a week and travel around the country with training. And I rethought the book.

There’s a cool point about Zuckerberg, Brin and Bezos getting on the media radar and becoming role models just because their story is out of the ordinary and you personally have a 0.01% chance of repeating it. But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t strive to be like Zuckerberg, you just have to remember that it won’t work at the first time, and it probably won’t work at the 10th time either. You have to fall down, get up, and keep going. You have to persevere, but not confuse it with manic idiocy.

It may seem simple, but in the early days of social networking I remember very well the number of orders for programmers that started with the words to clone Facebook. People were seriously convinced that if Durov did it, they could do it. This blind copying of successful models is what Mike warns against in his book “Startups Without a Budget.