I’m Mellissa Dean — Mel to everyone who works with me — a Fellow Chartered Certified Accountant (FCCA) with over 20 years in the industry, and the founder of my own UK practice, Think Big Accounting Limited.
Over those two decades I’ve worked with everyone from first-time founders to high level businesses with high net worth individuals. The work I love most is the work Start Sharp is built on: sitting down with a business owner, understanding what they actually want from their life, and building the plan that gets them there.
One partnership stays with me. When we started, they were making around £7,000 of profit — between two partners. We talked properly about the business: where income could really come from, which numbers actually mattered, and what success looked like for them. We set the key metrics, measured them, and kept the focus on one goal — more money in their own pockets. Within 18 months, that £7,000 had become £70,000. Within two years they’d grown from a team of two to a team of seven. What changed wasn’t luck — it was clarity.
I know first-hand that the right foundations take grit. I qualified first with the AAT — studying while pregnant, and then with a newborn — before going on to the ACCA, raising two children alongside my husband the whole way through. That’s the work ethic I bring to every client: whatever it takes, done properly.
I’ll always be straight with you — and I’d expect the same from anyone I work with. If you look up Think Big Accounting Limited on Companies House, you’ll see I set it up back in 2019, and that it’s been quiet since. Here’s the honest reason. I started trading that autumn and it was going well — then March 2020 arrived, Covid changed everything, and people simply weren’t looking to move accountants or make big decisions. So I made exactly the call I’d give any client: I protected my household, took a stable role, and paused the practice rather than force it through a storm. That wasn’t failure — it was judgement.
Now the ground is steady again, I’m reigniting Think Big Accounting Limited properly — following my own advice to the letter, with the very same key metrics, focus and honest planning I use with the people I work with, and growing it from the ground up. I’m not teaching from the sidelines. I’m building right alongside you, in real time — so when I say these foundations work, it’s because I’m laying them myself.
I started Start Sharp because so many people come to me asking the same questions — What’s best for me? How should I set up? Most are just starting out, without a pool of money for accountants or the budget to jump straight into expensive software. Start Sharp is here to help them make that first decision with real confidence.
But it was always about far more than one decision. The community and memberships coming soon are being built to bring great minds together from every kind of business — founders who are genuinely interested in growing their network, sharing the best practices they’ve each learned, and working together to help one another grow. Because the truth is, no one should have to build their business alone — and the people around you can be the difference between staying small and growing into everything you imagined.
MelMellissa Dean, FCCA · Founder, Start Sharp