Marion Ellis

"My work is about problem solving and finding creative solutions so yes, they do match.As a communicator I share knowledge and thought leadership to the residential surveying industry and also to my teams. As an explorer I am curious about why we do what we do and how we can do it better. As an investigator I look for the root cause of the problems to fix."

"My day to day job is mostly about running a small business. My business provides technical content and speakers for the surveying industry and so we are always looking for interesting cases and industry trends we can talk about, so as well as research we use PowerPoint and technology to put great presentations together. I love presenting, sharing our experience and knowledge. I get a buzz from enlightening minds and having the industry debate because that helps us learn every day. Everybody in my business knows what it’s like when work and home clash - like facing health challenges or struggling with the family parent/grandparent juggle. We know the loneliness of working in isolation, not feeling part of a team, feeling disconnected from our industry and what is going on. We know what it’s like to feel disempowered and frustrated - not being able to thrive at work and give the kind of service and advice to our clients that we want to.At the start of 2019 we started to think about what really mattered to us. What we love doing. What we hate doing. About where we were in our lives, careers and the amount of experience we have amassed over the years. We thought about the moments that mattered to us in our work and that made us love what we do – and it was where we connected with people. When someone messages us, emails us privately or asks for a quiet word after one of our practical sessions. They ask for help and we love to give it.We explored how we could help more people with what they really need, not just delivering the pure CPD. So, we created The Surveyor Hub - a place for surveyors and valuers to hang out, share the fun stuff and the tough stuff, and have a safe space to ask for help. We want surveyors to make a sustainable and profitable living. Doing what they love in this vibrant industry. While most of our day to day job is technical, it is the community support we provide that we love the most."

"After my A-levels I had a serious illness which meant I did not start Uni straight away. I took time out and did lots of jobs – a cleaner, bar work, office temping and call centre work until eventually I found myself being a mature student studying Estate Management which was quite a well-rounded property course. The jobs I had in those early years stood me in good stead though as although I qualified as a surveyor, I had such good customer service skills (and confidence) that I excelled in management and was responsible for handling customer queries and complaints which allowed me to hone my technical investigative skills. I never thought working in a shop or office would have been useful years later, but it really was as many of my peers didn’t have that work ethic or life experience.I had very few role models within my industry at the time, things are much better now and so I guess I was inspired by the work ethic of my family to work hard and do the best I could. I was the first in my family to get a degree – most of my brothers and sisters were mature students as well and are very successful. None of us knew what we wanted to do, but we knew the problems we wanted to solve and for me it was housing and property having grown up on a council estate. I imagine a world in which every bedsit, every apartment, every house, is a home: safe, warm, dry and lived in – not just habitable. My way of doing that is through the technical work I do as a surveyor."

"I am a Mum to two young children which takes up a lot of my time. I have a strong network of female surveyor friends through the www.womeninsurveying.com virtual summit I set up in 2018 and although we do a lot of events, it never feels like work more like friends meeting up. I believe in work life integration, not balance and I really love what I now do."

"My days varies considerably as I work for myself. Typically, it will be responding to emails and keeping on top of admin work including business accounts and cash flow. I use social media a lot such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter and so I plan my content and messaging and then schedule the content to go out.I run a Facebook and private members group for surveyors and so my day will usually involve answering their technical queries about property or how to report following their inspections or asking questions to help them find the answers."

"A-level Geography and GeologyBSc (Hons) Estate Management,Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (FRICS)Customer Experience Professional (CCXP)Certified Life Coach"