Mr. Barry, as much as I respect your incredible amount of work in the field of business planning, I absolutely disagree with your reasoning for why one should do business plan development on her/his own as opposed to hiring a professional.
On an average, how many times in life one develops a business plan? – More than certain, it would be only once at the most.

So, if your buy a land and you want to build a house only once in your life, would you do it by yourself or you would contract a building company to do it for you? Would you do the architectural drawing yourself, since you know exactly how the house you want to live in should look like, or you would go to an Architectural company?

How about preparing the cash flow projections that are required by lenders? On your financial projections, how would you account for the annual asset depreciation – as an increase or decrease to your cash balance???

I appreciate your role in empowering entrepreneurs by providing them with self-educational materials. There is a place and role for those too. But the point is that the business planning requires education, training and experience in different areas of business management such as finance/accounting, operations, and marketing.

Do you ever wonder my more than 90% of the startups fail?