Today we’d like to introduce you to Seda Hulagu.
Seda, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
My story started in Turkey. I have a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and master degree in Financial Markets and Investment Management. My career started in one of the biggest Asset Management companies as an Internal Controller and Auditor. After working eight years in the sector and having my two lovely kids, I decided to quit and have my own business. I’m one of the founder of Angelsfest which is an event planner company. I had that business until the end of 2016 when we decided to move to the USA because of my husband’s work. I had a great time with working with the families on those days and understood whatever I do, I should do with the families and kids.
When we moved to Houston, we had a tough year with getting used to another country and changing with our whole life. Especially our kids with school and language. I haven’t worked for a year to support my family but then I started to say that I should do something. When I was looking for the franchise opportunities, our broker explained Tutor Doctor. That was my dream which was supporting the families and changing the trajectory of their lives. I fell in love every other day when I was researching Tutor Doctor. Tutor Doctor is one to one at home tutoring company. We support the students on every age in every subject. I go to the families’ houses and share their life at some points. Building relationship with them, understanding their needs, making changes on their academic life, seeing the progress are my obsessions.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
In my opinion, the road on establishing a business can not be smooth at all. 🙂 I had many struggles along the way, and I still have sometimes. Especially education businesses are always open to improvement and has a dynamic environment. There is no way to make a mistake since this might affect someone’s future. The first thing I was thinking was that and therefore I studied for the whole school system in our area to guide our students in a right way. That was a big challenge for me since the system changes all the time.
Also, there is many things to do at the beginning for establishing and running the business at the same time. I think the biggest obstacle was that. Set up everything correctly for business, but at the same time marketing TD brand, taking care of our existing students, families, tutors and improving ourselves every day. That was a tough but very exciting time for me. And when I look where we are now, I think it’s more than worth it 🙂
We’d love to hear more about your business.
Tutor Doctor is Canadian based company which has franchisees on all over the world. We are on 17 countries and have helped 250,000 students since 30 years. TD has 17,000 tutors in the USA. TD is one to one at home tutoring company. I’m so proud of saying that we change the families’ trajectory with changing their students’ academic life. We start with our free consultation to the process to understand the families’ needs and expectations with tutoring. We do assessments for the students in this consultations to see the gaps coming from the past and their situation as of today. Then we recommend a full coverage educational plan to the families. When we gather all the information we start for the matching process. It might take between 2-15 days to match a student with a tutor. This is one of the most important steps for us to achieve the goals. When the tutoring start we keep following up with the families for making sure that we see a progress. We’re also in touch with the school teachers’ if the families give permission for that. We believe in the communication and helping to the student all together as the family, educational consultants, teachers and tutors. Each process for every single student is unique, individualized and tailor-made.
What were you like growing up?
I had a very happy childhood. I grow up with my mom, dad and grandma. I was very outgoing and social kid. I was also very responsible who studied a lot. I had lots of friends and loved to go out with them. I love spending time with my mom and dad, they are my best friends. I played tennis and guitar when I was a child and teenager. I have been a tutor when I was in the college. I always love teaching.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.tutordoctor.com/cypress
- Phone: 8322789266
- Email: shulagu@tutordoctor.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tutordoctorcypress/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TutorDoctorCypress/
- Other: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seda-hulagu-230236179/
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