How would you like to get business start-up advice straight from the man who cofounded Global Entrepreneurship Week and StartUp America? Well, now you can. Forget everything you thought you knew about starting up - this is the essential guide to going it alone and starting a business.

Carl Schramm, the man described by The Economist as 'the evangelist of Entrepreneurship', has written a myth-busting guide packed with tools and techniques to help you get your big idea off the ground. Carl believes that entrepreneurship has been completely misrepresented by the media, business books, university programmes and MBA courses. He believes that the perception of what it takes to start a business no longer matches the reality - which is bad news for everyone because it stops great ideas coming to life.

Burn the Business Plan punctures the myth of the cool, tech-savvy 20-something entrepreneur with nothing to lose and venture capital to burn, showing that most people who start businesses are juggling careers and mortgages just like you. Burn the Business Plan is written to encourage you to get started. It demystifies the entrepreneurial process portrayed on television shows like Dragon's Den. It doesn't rely on largely irrelevant stories of overvalued tech start-ups, nor does it build on the largely mistaken narrative of a linear path from cold start to great success that is the essence of business planning, as taught in universities.

This is the guide to starting and running a business that will actually work for the rest of us. Burn the Business Plan is for regular people who just want practical, real-world advice on how to start and run a successful business. It shows you how to avoid the common mistakes and what you need to do to put your enterprise on track for success.