During my internship, I held a private 1-on-1 with Tech4Learning owner Melinda Kolk. Throughout the duration of the discussion, I gathered information on the company's journey through successes and failures, as well as Melinda's experience as through it all. She shared many valuable life lessons and knowledgeable information with me, especially on how to manage a company through the eyes of an entrepreneur. Shared below is an edited transcript of the conversation as well as key statements and important quotes from the interview.
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Mentor Quote Collage
I have been working for a long time now, and I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up.
And in education, our biggest competitor is also toilet paper. I mean, if the price of toilet paper goes up, you dump the software because again, we're one of the lowest in the hierarchy. My suggestion is to always say yes to opportunities, because you never know what you're going to find enjoyable. And if you don't like it, well now you know. One really hard part about becoming an entrepreneur is that after about six months of working in that role you can never become an employee of someone else or work for another company, because you won't be able to play their game. |
We are told you can grow up to be anything, but we are never told you have to grow up to be something. We aren't prepared for the mental fact that we cant pursue every career." This little girl comes up to us in class and proceeds to school us on her project, how to do it, how to organize your team and who's doing what, and it was unbelievable. We were sold. I mean you're six years old and she just told us all that information so clearly. So from then on our job was to aim for every classroom to look like that. We have never been purely pro learning. We've always been creating, designing, applying. |
Sometimes you don't realize that you're enjoying it until you're not doing it anymore.