Happy Birthday To Us!

This September marks the seventh anniversary of Paul Beare Ltd. In those seven years, the firm has gone from an idea kicked around the kitchen table to an internationally recognised business, a known UK leading accounting firm for overseas companies looking to locate in the UK.  

“It’s been quite a journey,” says Paul. “Since we started the business in 2015 we’ve come such a long way and to see where we are now is really quite something.” 

Having started up on his own, Paul’s first client was a software tech company and within the first year the client list had grown to 30. 

My first employee was a lady I’d known for over 20 years, and she helped me get the business up and running in large part thanks to her expertise in navigating the UK’s sometimes confusing banking system. That helped us carve out as niche among overseas firms coming to the UK for the first time and the rest is history. 

The growth of the business over the following years brought a great deal of success as the client list grew to encompass engagements in the US, Australia, New Zealand and beyond. 

“I think our breakthrough’ client was Australian payments innovator OpenPay was pretty epic,” he says now. “They were rejected for a bank account, but we managed to package it in a clearer way to the bank and the account was subsequently opened.” 

But he admits there were a few headaches. “I think the biggest challenge centres around decisions,” Paul reflects. “The hardest part is making them; once made, actioning is easy. Surrounding yourself with a strong and experienced peer group always helps though.” 

It’s the same piece of advice I give to in-bound UK startup clients we support, ‘talk to others who have recently completed the journey’.

And of course, it’s fair to say that although the business remains nimble and focused on helping growing businesses, with seven years of success, Paul Beare isn’t really a start up any more. “I think I truly realised that three or four years ago, when we were setting an appropriate marketing with content strategy,” Paul says.  

Our clients are all overseas. How do they find us? Organically and through world of mouth/referrals. Getting that set up and seeing the subsequent results really brought home to me how much we’d grown. 

And that growth now means PB now has 200 clients with over 300 employees managed on remote payroll. So what next? 

“Scale,” says Paul. “It’s the growth element of our clients success that propels our growth. If our clients grow, we grow with them.”