David Melia – Episode 202

David and I talked about entrepreneurship, what’s wrong with our educational system, why learners need to be engaged and how passion plays such an important role in pretty much everything and about his exciting initiative called Kaajenga.

Biography
David founded KAAJENGA after a 25-year career in consulting, eLearning, technology, and banking. He became Chief Executive Officer of Spring Valley Architectural Innovations in 2011 and helped turn it around, grew sales 435% creating a national sales network in the process. At various stages throughout his career he has held many executive management positions in both private and public organizations including; INTERCHANGE, The Executive Knowledge Exchange, the Business Development Bank of Canada, Networks North NETWORKS NORTH INC. (NASDAQ:NETN), IRGATEWAY (TSX Venture Exchange) and Curriculum Services Canada (Not for Profit). He was nominated for Canadian Young Entrepreneur of the Year and built a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solution for his service-based business in the early 80’s, managed the global launch of a leading eLearning software solution in the 90’s, built a virtual learning hospital in the 20^thcentury, and through INTERCHANGE, The Executive Knowledge Exchange helped a number of the Profit 100 companies grow sales, raise capital and execute growth strategies. A number of the companies in the portfolio of companies were architectural products manufacturers or related architectural innovators. Having completed multiple rounds of funding through to an IPO, he was twice featured in the annual report of a large Canadian Bank, for his creative financial and management strategies. David spent the past 10-years developing a systematic sales process that resulted in the creation of KAAJENGA, Video marketing, social sharing system for the architectural industry that centralizes and manages sales activity through a CRM, promotes social sharing, reports on the analytics, and rewards engagement activity. His specialty is his systematic sales models for value-based selling. He spent two years guest lecturing on Strategic Management at the University of New Brunswick, taught entrepreneurship in the 90’s, co-authored entrepreneurial books, sales methodologies, and numerous white papers including; “Crossing Death Valley”, a discussion paper on early stage funding and management support.