An increasing number of entrepreneurs are striking out on their own armed with a passion to transform an idea into reality.  The trouble is that all new start ups are relying upon a set of guesses upon which to build their business and those guesses are frequently a bit optimistic.

Tim Latham, the founder of Unconsultancy a Midlands based business "consultancy with a difference" undertook two start ups following a corporate career including Shell, PricewaterhouseCoopers and London Business School. One of the start ups did well, the other was, to use his words "a beautifully executed failure, like many start ups I launched only to find that the queue of customers was rather shorter than predicted!".

Latham said "In a start up, getting the various elements of the business model aligned correctly is like solving a large set of simultaneous equations or solving a combination of Rubik's cube and Soduko, and the starting point is a set of guesses. The great news is that there is now a process that start ups can adopt which takes the risk away so even before you launch you know there will be a queue of customers."

Tim's firm, Unconsultancy is running a series of workshops across the East Midlands during February where entrepreneurs can learn how to turn their hopes and guesses into facts and so increase their prospects of joining the ranks of successful businesses.