Conquering the tittle of best weighing company in the world, reaching the top 10 of the 100 best companies to work at in Portugal, achieving such success internationally, overcoming every single problem, and so many other good things don’t happen by chance. They happen because, at Balanças Marques, we are a big family, united around the same goal. They happen because we have a great leader, who always gives us the wise advices of a father’s voice.
If there is someone who inspires us, who compels us to go further, that person is Balanças Marques’ – our family’s – patriarch. José Pimenta Marques is an example whose footsteps we want to follow. For the entrepreneurship, for the courage, for the strength he has always shown. And for the lessons each of his life’ stories teach us.
On this Father’s Day month, we share with you some of the advices ours has given us:
- Everything really worthwhile is a result of hard work.
After all the challenges he faced, after all the hard work he had to do, José Pimenta Marques looks at the family and company he built and he knows everything was worth it – each misfortune, each obstacle, each ill-slept night. For him, the best things in life, the achievement of long dreamt goals, offer much more satisfaction when one tries hard to get them.
On his own words: “For something to really have flavour, it must come from our own sweat, it must be something that resulted from our own effort”.
- But life isn’t all about work.
Even with a business that demanded much more of him then the usual eight daily hours of work, our patriarch always came up with time for everything and to dedicate to the hobbies that give him most pleasure until today, like music.
“In spite of all the work I had to do, I never missed a rehearsal or an activity of the traditional music groups I was a part of. I never gave up on hunting, fishing or anything I liked”, ensures Balanças Marques’ father.
- Everything gets easier when we have someone by our side.
To José Pimenta Marques, his wife, Maria da Conceição Barbosa, is a “woman of war”. She was an essential part in overcoming each obstacle and in making his dreams come true. Had he been alone, he believes everything would be much harder, everything would have demanded more work; maybe all this wouldn’t even be possible.
“A bicycle needs two wheels to function”, he says, “And, for me, she was the second wheel. I’m not going to say only my wheel did the work, both my wheel and hers were necessary. It was her who helped making it all go well and helped reaching this point”.
