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Defining Moment

Some London based companies said I was crazy to start my own business in an industrial town like Middlesbrough. I think there’s this stereotype about the North East, its all flat caps and whippets but it’s actually full of fantastic people running… read more

Defining Moment

Six months after we’d got going, Cleveland County Council, who generated a third of our business, took all their recruitment and marketing work in house. So almost overnight we’d lost a big part of our business, It was a huge blow and we really needed to… read more

Lifestyle Story

Like many business owners running Pearsons has been a huge roller coaster of highs and lows! Since starting Pearsons 22years ago the business has been all consuming with incredibly long hours so by the weekend I did not have much energy left. As a result… read more

Mistake To Avoid

In the mid/late ‘90s we experienced rapid growth. In six years we’d grown from a turnover of £7m to £23m but we got carried away about the growth in itself and didn’t manage control of the costs. By 2003 we’d become the eighth biggest recruitment… read more

Mistake To Avoid

Another mistake we made was not being commercially sharp enough in charging the appropriate fees that reflect our quality and professional service. We needed a much tighter business focus. Now, at the end of each month I dig out the business plan and… read more

Secret

To succeed in business I think you have to be incredibly resilient. No matter how many times you’ve been kicked on the floor get back up again as I’ve had to get up again about a hundred times. I believe that the reason why some people fail in business… read more

Secret

Leadership is key, but only in the sense that you’re able to work with a group of people that you like and respect. People can then look to you and also can be influenced by the way you run the business. That’s why it’s important to not let people see… read more

How I...

We take all new employees on a lengthy induction course. As important in learning all the new technical skills is taking in the Pearsons’ ethos, and everyone, from reception to programmers to designers, is expected to take part. I once had someone come… read more

Pearl Of Wisdom

Someone once said to me, ‘Turnover is vanity, profit is sanity, cash is reality’ and it really is true. In business you’ve got to watch your cash flow all the time.… read more

Challenge

I’d left school at sixteen so I didn’t have a clue what a balance sheet, a spreadsheet, a P&L was. Its quite daunting when you’re on your own because I couldn’t just pick up the phone, dial the Leeds office and say what about this problem, what about… read more

Success

After four and a half years we ended up growing to have a £4m turnover. But then the recession came along in the early ‘90s and all of a sudden marketing and recruitment budgets were cut. It was a real learning curve because we were losing money. But… read more

Aspiration

We’re now aiming to be the number one recruitment and marketing digital communications company, and we’ll do it from the North East.… read more

Support Story

In 2004 we got KPMG in to have a look at our business. They performed a fine-tuning and made us sharper, leaner, meaner, more focused whilst still maintaining the Pearson’s ethos and helped us to make a transition to a more digitally led business by… read more

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