Marion's Blog

As I read Adrie’s blog about education over the weekend, I was looking back at my own career and the path I had taken to entrepreneurship.

Although I finished my primary and secondary schooling in good order, and then continued to do two further educations – I left my country when I was only 20 to go and live in the Middle East for 4 years meaning I never completed a further study. However, completely like Adrie, I always realized that knowledge is key in the world we live in today and was studying even whilst I was out in the Oman (Norwegian, naturally J ) . I then moved to the UK and proceeded to do an evening study lasting 4 years next to a full-time job. And over the years I have supplemented my knowledge by doing a wide variety of studies and courses…. So yes, I am a firm subscriber to the view that knowledge and education are not something you leave behind you when you leave school but more something that is part and parcel of everything you undertake. Some of it will come from people, other times you will take a course or simply read a book that will teach you a new topic.

Knowledge though, does more then merely teach you about the subject you are learning. It gives you a view on how to deal with the intake of information, on how to analyse data in an efficient manner and how to succeed whilst facing deadlines that are seemingly impossible. I took the route of working for other companies early on – working for a bank to start with. But I never took it for granted that I would merely fulfill what was written in my job description and tried to learn as much as I could whilst I was there. It led to several promotions until I got bored with the narrow mindset of banks, and left to join my first technology company. Four other technology start-ups followed, each giving me new insight in how to run a company, how to start a company, what not to do in merger negotiations and eventually all of this combined made me feel I could actually do it myself. In fact, I’ll say this honestly, I felt I could do it BETTER myself then the management teams I had observed… and thus I became an entrepreneur and have not looked back since. All the things that I have learnt over those many years are now serving me well – finance, management, M & A, legal, sales…. All part and parcel of being a business owner.

But I won’t take the knowledge I have gained for granted… as the saying goes “as you acquire knowledge, you also learn how little you know"

There is so much around us that is worth learning - and whilst everyone these days is "busy" - it is worth investing this bit of time in yourself and your own development.