There are plenty of articles out there on the biggest mistakes you don't want to make when you start a business.  In fact, I've probably written one or two of them, but at least I can proudly say I actually committed a few of those mistakes so I know for a fact they're mistakes you shouldn't make.  What disappoints me is when a consultant  an entrepreneur wannabe and professional service provider) who does business plans and financial projections for startups claims to be an expert on the subject and completely misses perhaps two of the biggest reasons new businesses fail.

The article I'm referring to is "10 Mistakes That Start-Up Entrepreneurs Make," (a catchy title, don't you think? :) written by Rosalind Resnick (the aforementioned consultant) for my favorite newspaper The Wall Street Journal.  Her top 10 mistakes included 1) going it alone, 2) asking too many people for advice, 3) spending too much time on product development, 4) targeting too small a market (yawn) and, well you get the picture.  It's not that this is bad advice--it's not--it's very good advice and you should read the article; but as I said, I think the she missed the critical points.  The first "biggest" mistake is not solving a compelling problem or need in the market.  In other words, there is no real reason for your business to exist in the first place. If you don't address a significant pain in the market, all the rest of the mistakes won't matter.

Second, if you don't have the right team that can actually execute the startup, you won't be able to raise money and you won't get off the ground.  Teams that can execute have experience doing just that, or are well connected to people who can help, or have worked in the industry, or all of the above.  So read the article, but add these two points as numbers 1 and 2; then all the rest will make sense. Bottom line: make sure your business addresses a real pain and has a team that can make it happen.  Then you can try to avoid all the other mistakes.

First, I would like to take time to congratulate my blog-mate Kathy Allen for her recent article in Forbes -- awesome job! I'm sure this won't be the last we see of Kathy in Forbes. Second, I had to laugh when I read the male engineer's quote in Kathy's latest post: " Excellent advice, even for those of us among the weaker sex." At least until I thought about it for a minute and realized that this assessment rings true. By many measures, in American business today women are increasingly pulling ahead of men.

According to a recent article in the New York Times, women out-earn men in part-time jobs. As the review of U.S. Department of Labor statistics for 2009 clearly showed, most women make more than men who work equivalent part-time hours, with the exception of workers who put in fewer than five hours a week. Of course, as the chart shows, this earning advantage on the part of women evaporates as soon as the line into 40-hour-per-week, full-time work is crossed. Women still earn less than their male counterparts when working full-time jobs. But it's a start.

And then there was the article published by Atlantic magazine last month titled "The End of Men." The article pointed out among other things that early this year women became the majority of the U.S. workforce for the first time in U.S. history, that most managers are now women, and that for every two men who get a college degree this year, three women will do the same.

So, yes. When it comes to business, it appears that the engineer who commented on Kathy's Forbes article was right. Women are no longer the weaker sex, and men are beginning to notice.

 I just had the opportunity to write for Forbes about what you need to think about if you believe it's time to leave your job in Corporate America.  This is an issue many women have faced as they begin to hit the glass ceiling and are frustrated that their job is not giving them everything it should.   In fact, that's why many women leave the corporate world to start their own businesses.  But surprisingly enough, I heard today from an engineer who said he had learned something from the article as well, claiming " Excellent advice, even for those of us among the weaker sex."

The article is called, "Time to Start a Startup?"  and it deals with how you make the decision to leave the relative safety of a job to do your life's work, whatever that may be--start a business, write a novel, start a school in Zimbabwe.  It doesn't matter.  The important thing is that you're doing something you love.  You're getting up every day excited to start your work because it doesn't feel like work.  I believe that I've been successful because I've created the life I always wanted to have.  Success is not measured in numbers or money or publicity.  To me, success is freedom--freedom to do the work I want to do when I want to do it.  Check out the article and let me know what you think.  How do you measure success?