How Kevin took his business from a caravan to the heart of the community

In the latest edition of Marketing Derby’s Innovate Magazine we meet Kevin Drew, the founder of Ascentant Accountancy, which this year marks a decade in business.

Since it began in 2016, Ascentant has forged a reputation as a professional services business that is firmly embedded in the heart of the communities it serves, operating from offices in Derby and Ripley.

In our interview, we sit down with Kevin to look at the journey he has taken – both personally and professionally – to build Ascentant into what it is today.

That journey began a decade, in a caravan at the bottom of his parents’ garden in Tutbury.

Kevin was living there after returning from London, where he had spent 15 years working in the legal sector.

He told Innovate: “It was exciting. It was stressful. It was the unknown. I was not really sure what I was doing. I’d never run a business before.”

A decade later, Ascentant employs 15 people across its two offices, supporting clients across a wide range of accountancy services, including a specialist legal cashiering offer for law firms across England and Wales.

But the numbers only tell part of the story. Because what Kevin has built is also an expression of his character: plain speaking, generous, unconventional and determined to make people feel welcome.

He told Innovate: “We want to be that approachable accountant.

“We have a lot of people walk through the door and say we don’t look like an accountancy practice.

“I can bring my dog to work. I can dress down. I don’t need to pretend. I can be open and honest.”

Innovate also learns about the community side of Ascentant’s work – how it started running networking events for SMEs, offering space for community groups to meet and embedding itself on the high street.

This community activity helps Ascentant stand out. It builds awareness, it creates word-of-mouth recommendations and it gives people a reason to remember the business.

But Kevin admits he doesn’t stop to analyse these things – to use his own words he “just does it”.

The business has come a long way in the past 10 years. Reflecting on what the man in the caravan would think, he tells Innovate: “I don’t think my back would cope with the caravan 10 years on.

“But if somebody had told me 10 years ago that I’d be sat here, where I am now, I’d probably have laughed at them.”

To read the feature in full click here.