Providing a range of services to companies wishing to enter or expand their presence in the health and social care market, Pym’s Consultancy draws on decades of senior management experience in order to deliver a wide variety of business needs. We speak to Founder, Kate Pym, about the firm and how it has gone from strength-to-strength.
Pym’s Consultancy Ltd (Pym’s) was founded in 2014 with the intention of training business owners and directors of health and care SMEs to help them compete with the larger national and international companies in the market. In reality, training is only a very small element of the business, and many of the firm’s clients want work to be completed for them whilst mentoring the business owners and directors to increase skills and confidence.
Kate Pym is the sole owner and managing director of the firm and the business strategy, development, sales and marketing is all her responsibility.
“I lead on all client projects, appoint the appropriate consultants to work with me on them, and ensure deadlines and expectations are met or exceeded,” she explains. “The clients we have range from plcs wishing to branch into new areas which they are unfamiliar with, to SMEs, and multiple universities and third sector, with the majority being UK based, although we also support companies wanting to expand into the UK from overseas.”
The agency has a unique approach as it consists of a team of highly experienced independent consultants, who each own their own business, ensuring each consultant has very strong commercial skills, and Pym’s can collaborate across a range of highly specific skills for commercialisation in the sector.
The non-exhaustive services Kate and her team offer range from market research, customer discovery, and road mapping; sales training, marketing and team building; to bid writing, sourcing funding, and creating regulatory strategy.
Coming from a pharma-sales background, Kate realised early on that she held too much value in the revenue that she generated for her line managers – she was never going to be promoted and become ‘boss’ and the only way was to start up on her own. Having created Pym’s from nothing, and running at a profit just three months in, whilst helping others to increase their revenue, means there was simply no looking back for Kate.
Whilst being a woman in a high-profile position can often be tough, Kate has never considered her gender to play any role in what can be achieved in business and believes that the only thing preventing you from achieving your goal is yourself.
“This industry has a lot of women in it, and I work with many women consultants,” she says. “All of us are driven by a combination of improving and saving lives and being successful in our own businesses. It is a privilege to have the opportunity to help so many companies make these differences by bringing innovation to market.”
Kate does, however, actively promote and support other women in business and is currently starting a new project with Memory Matters, based on her experience of caring for her mother when she was living with vascular dementia.
“The three project leads are all women,” she states and continues to impart words of wisdom. “My advice to other women, be smart, don’t rely on your looks, read, know your stuff and gain respect by being of value to the people you work with.”
It is this ethos which has helped Kate clinch the prestigious title of Best Health & Social Care Consultant (UK) in the Influential Businesswoman Awards 2021 and, with her ambitious plans for the future, she is showing no signs of slowing down the pace.
“We have just built a new team for digital implementation for the Internet of Things (IoT) in health and care. We are also working with multiple clients from the UK and overseas after our best year since inception, we can only predict that this will continue.
“For now, we will keep building the business, and strengthening our unique team.”
