Growing Your Social Capital

Person #1

1) My first person is Elizabeth Watson. She works in a product development department creating car accessories. Previously, she worked to design toys for children.

2) She is my "domain expert". Because she works with car accessories so she knows about products made for cars as an addition to the features cars already offer.

3) For all of my contacts, I asked my parents if they knew of someone in this particular industry. Once they gave me the name and contact information, I reached out and asked if they would mind listening to my idea.

4) She listened to my idea and in turn Elizabeth asked for my opinion on a product she was working on. It was a new design for car coasters!

5) She will be vital in my network because of her history working with the parameters of the interior of a car. She can give me some consumer insight to the characteristics people prefer for products they use in a car. 


Person #2

1) My second person is Jeffery King. He works for an off-price retailer as a buyer for the kids department. Before this role, he has worked for other retailers buying in the beauty and kids departments.

2) I am using Jeff as my market expert. He fills this position because he is also targeting moms buying products for their children which is one of my main target markets.

3) Like the previously contact, I asked my parents to connect me with someone they new in this area. I thought this would be the easiest way to contact someone and get a response back.

4) I asked Jeff to listen to my car table idea and in return he asked me to ask my little brother and sister if they minded looking at some phone cases he was looking into buying.

5) This person will be vital because they could potentially put me in contact with a buyer that might be interested in my product.


Person #3 

1) My third person is Katie Long. She works for a water bottle manufacturer which sells their products to athletic retailers. 

2) I am using Katie as my supplier because she works for a company who makes and sells products. 

3) Again, thankfully my parents knew Katie and helped me get in contact with her. 

4) I asked her to listen to my product concept and in turn asked me to test a new water bottle they made that has GPS feature. 

5) Katie will be vital as part of my network because working in the manufacturing business she could either suggest a manufacturer to pursue or help secure a supply channel once my product is developed. 

Reflect

This experience definitely pushed me out of my comfort zone. I have only ever contacted one of my parents contacts before when I was looking to improve my interviewing abilities and expand my network. This required me to understand more about what these new contacts do and also ask to help them in some way in order to create a win-win situation. Like I said I do not often participate in targeted networking so this process helped me to be more open and practice talking to new people.