Famous people have never really interested me.

It’s not their fault really, most of them never really wanted to be interesting in the first place. They just wanted to be famous. If Tiger Woods or Brangelina or whoever else we’ve shoved onto the public stage this week could avoid tabloid rags taking pictures of their latest pimple, 7 out of 10 days they would. Unfortunately, that isn’t going to happen anytime soon.

Over the years I’ve made a lot of mistakes when trying to start businesses. It’s an obscene, almost irresponsible number of mistakes when I really look back at it.

I’ve also had the good fortune of getting to learn firsthand from the mistakes of others, which I’ve come to realize are just as silly and half-cocked as my own.

The net result is that I have a pretty good grasp on how businesses fail, so today I wanted to present you with a nonexhaustive list of some of the more common themes I’ve run into when dealing with entrepreneurs on the path to ruin.

When I was seven years old, I ate 21 slices of pizza in one sitting.

I know what you must be thinking. Well, you’re right, I was young and reckless.

It was the early 90s, I was at a birthday party and those 21 slices of greasy, cheesy Sicilian goodness where just sitting there, calling out to me.

The clock is tick, tick, ticking away on 2009 and as the year breaths it’s final breathe, everyone and his mother is putting together best of lists to round out the holiday season.

Since I would hate to disappoint, I wanted to give you all a list of my own to chew on as you make your way through your post-New Years “I’m serious about the diet this time” chip bowl.

For every hour of every day that we bebop our way through the world, for every risk we take, for every decision that we make, for every brilliant plan that springs to life at 3AM to do something world changing, for all of it there is a voice somewhere in the back of our heads telling us that despite the odds, everything is going to work out for the best.

The unwritten law that everyone knows but no one likes to talk about is that businesses, like politicians, don’t really care about you.

It’s a fundamental truth.

Businesses don’t care about you, entrepreneurs don’t care about you and at the end of the day, if we could abstract you down to the size of your wallet and your pertinent buying patterns we would — gladly.

Let me back up a second.

This is a cautionary tale.

One of the biggest dangers anyone of an entrepreneurial bend faces is starting to believe his own press. Ask any child star or former athlete and they’ll tell you just how quickly your crowds of adoring fans will turn into piles of year old fan mail.

I’ve spent the last ten days sick.

Not the most inspirational start to a post, but work with me on this one. When you spend the better part of two weeks popping cough drops like they were Skittles, and the majority of your evenings willing your eyes open so you can finish up the work that simply must get done lest the powers that be strike you down, you learn some important lessons.

I am always surprised by how many small business owner’s decisions are driven by fear. Mostly, it’s fear that some other clever person, somewhere on the Internet, is going to steal their idea and capture 1% of the exploding gizmo market before they do.

These kinds of fears are completely unfounded.