It might be surprising to learn that many new entrepreneurs ignore advice even when it is given by experts. With as many valuable resources and expert business advice on startups, strategy and financial planning available online today, you would think that more entrepreneurs would succeed at building sustainable business models, but in fact, the opposite is true. Businesses still fail at a staggering rate in both healthy and down-turned economies, and there is not any shortage of research as to why. Take any of the dozens of articles from your favorite platforms and distill their top reasons down to a single root cause, and I have observed that your number one culprit is typically a lack of planning.