Why Fresh Thinking Capital founder Mel Hird believes other people's perceptions of her are wrong

However, that couldn’t be further from the truth and the last couple of years in particular have taught her that there’s more to life than doing the next deal, she says.

Her recent divorce from her wife and parenting her nine-year-old daughter through everything that comes with that have changed her.

"The last two years have taught me a lot in life,” she admits.

"People in business who don’t know me perceive me as a really driven, focused, clever individual. I think people perceive me as being very serious but underneath all of that I am the most caring, fun-loving individual whose door is always open.”

She adds: "Having a daughter and going through a divorce has made me look at life very differently.

"What was always driven, doing the next business deal has changed. My focus is very different nowadays and it’s very much family time, fun time and enjoying everything I do at work. If I don’t enjoy it, I don’t do it.”

Hird, 44, is the co-founder and director of Leeds-based Fresh Thinking Capital, which provides funding, backed by Foresight Group, and advisory services to small-and-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that are on a growth curve.

It employs 11 people who focus on helping businesses that have clear environmental, social, and governance (ESG) plans.

"The environmental impact we can make as a small business is limited,” Hird says. “But the volume of business lending we do is significant. In my career I will have raised over £1bn of funding for companies and the footprint of that is huge."

She adds: “Businesses are taking ESG a lot more seriously now.”

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Hird’s career has seen her make her mark as one of the most respected operators in her field but her path to success is not your typical university-graduate-corporate-ladder story.

Hird was born and brought up in Howden, East Yorkshire but at the age of 15, just before her GCSEs, her best friend died in a cycling accident.

She managed to complete her exams but, anticipating low marks, she looked for a job to gain some experience and found work with an agricultural business consultant.

"I wrote to the big accountants back then and PwC and KPMG gave me the opportunity for interview,” she says.

"I was a bit tenacious and after not hearing back from Ernst & Young (now EY) I walked down to their office in Leeds to ask why.

"I spoke to HR and they invited me back the next day for an interview. I got the job and that was the start of working in a big corporate environment in the restructuring team.”

As one of only two school leavers across the country at the firm, she didn’t have a formal career path to follow.

“They didn’t really know what to do with me at first but I was hungry for work, thrown in at the deep end and got some really great experience,” she says.

"I was always keen for EY not just to look at graduate programmes but to look at business developers who add personality as well as technical skills and I’m really pleased that that’s something that’s happened.”

In 2004 at the age of 24, after completing her accountancy exams, she decided to move to Kroll’s restructuring team in Leeds, the youngest insolvency practitioner in the UK, working on national and international assignments.

Three years later, anticipating a crash in the market, she decided to leave her corporate career and go into business investment with a private high net worth individual.

"He had the money and I had the contacts and the relationships to be able to find opportunities,” she says.

She adds: "It was a bold choice and people said to me that they didn’t think I’d timed it right. It appealed to my appetite for risk and I was prepared to back myself but for the first six months I felt physically sick every day with fear.”

With a raft of deals under her belt, in 2010 Hird became a founding partner of specialist SME investment business Seneca alongside Ian Currie and Richard Manley. In 2012 they were joined by Andrew Walls.

Hird and Walls hit it off straight away and in 2018 they decided to exit Seneca and create SME debt provider Fresh Thinking Capital.

“It coincided with the world changing,” says Hird. “We bring corporate governance and working capital to management teams. The advisory side of the business is an extension of their finance function.

“In 2008, finance directors used to be able to count on one hand the high street or challenger banks they could go to for capital.

"There are now over 5,000 lenders in the marketplace now and you need to be able to navigate and have relationships with those funders to know where to go at the right place and right time.”

She adds: "We have a team of people who do nothing but understand what’s going on in the landscape of funding and we like to position businesses with the best chance of raising funding because the skillsets in funders is very limited now.”

Hird may only be in her forties but with a career spanning more than 25 years she is already thinking about her legacy and is keen to help younger generations.

This is the reason she set up Fresh Thinking Network – to help young people build and establish working relationships through a 12-month programme.

“The power of network and relationships is the lifeblood of working in professional practice,” says Hird.

"My legacy is to give back training, education and experience to the generations coming through."