Over recent weeks I have picked up that it has been result time for school, college and university students. Every year around this time I get taken back to my school results day and I can tell you it was not a day I remember fondly.

As I read my results I remember getting upset, I felt a failure and that I had let my parents down. I left school with 4 C.S.E’s – not one O’level in sight! (now I am showing my age!) I had no idea what I wanted to do but took the option of going to college to train as a hairdresser. I did however succeed at this but on leaving college with credits and distinctions realised after only three weeks in a hairdressing salon, this was not for me.

It was then at the age of 18 I took on my first ever management job in the local newsagents and I loved it. I did go back to college to take an office course at the age of 20 however I liked typing as much as hairdressing so that too past by the wayside. I can however rejoice in the fact that I did, at college manage as part of the course to get an O’level to my name!

It was at the ripe ole age of 21 that I finally found my career – management!

It started as a manager of a one-hour photo shop, then I became an area manager before moving to London to manage photo shops in the heart of the west end.

My management career took me from that small newsagent shop at the age of 18 across many roles. I worked as a Group Regional Manager for two separate firms, managing over 200 staff; I worked as a sales team manager, a budget manager (looking after 8 million pounds worth of budgets), a project manager and an account manager. Overall, my management career spanned 30 years across the UK and Ireland.

In 2009 management in the corporate world took its toll and I suffered corporate burnout.

Since then, I have built and grown my own successful business turning it into a Limited Company and employing staff. I am a published author, which was a childhood dream. I am an award-winning business owner, a media contributor and public speaker who believes whatever your school results are you can always live the dream.

I don’t think I’ve done bad for a girl who left school with 4 C.S.E’s do you?

So whatever your results are and maybe were back in the day, rejoice in them – lift your head to the sky and know that ‘good is good enough’ – you did your best, no one can ask for more and trust me this is all we ever need to remember, it is of course as we grow older we realise that life is the only place where experience comes before the lessons.

Remember wherever you fell on the grades chart there are many like me that left school with minimum or indeed no qualifications, in fact a high percentage who have risen to appear on today’s rich list have no formal qualifications either however as we all have learnt with age, riches lie within and certainly aren’t born out of the grades on the exam papers. 

So, stand tall and believe that whatever your dream is you can go live it, no matter your age, or indeed your school grades!