GROWING SOCIAL CAPITAL

DOMAIN EXPERT

Dan – Has worked in sales for many years. We met out in Utah when we were doing door to door sales for a Satellite distributor. Dan has his own small business where he does much of the same type of business I would be doing. He contacts Sales companies and helps them optimize their performance mainly by using different apps and bringing on his sales force. He also does most of the sales in that region for a couple big TV providers as his own authorized retailer.  I worked for Dan for a little while doing sales for his company. He was eager to share some advice for my business idea. Main thing I got out of our exchange was how to set these meetings up with these owners and continue to follow up until I can get a one on one sit down with them and build relationships with them. Although he does different work then I would like to do the business model is the same. He is a valuable help to have in my network as he already has his own business and can help me with the overall business side of things.

MARKET EXPERT

Marjorie – Does social media marketing for small businesses. She started with her Facebook page and acquired a nice following from reviewing different makeup products. She has transitioned to all thing’s social media, especially helping small business grow their social media platforms and creating ads for them and training them on how to have more success with their ads. Marjorie was one of my youth camp teachers a long time ago and we have stayed friends on Facebook. I messaged her on Facebook and asked her some advice about social media advertising and she was happy to share her thoughts. One big take away I got was she said her page didn’t really start taking off until she started being more genuine and really speaking her mind and posting things that she was really passionate about. She says it is all about being real and vulnerable and showing others the truth about your company or yourself. 

INDUSTRY SUPPLIER

Shannon – is one of the managers for a meal prep company out west. She provides prepared meals for a lot of the CrossFit gyms in the area. The CrossFit gyms refer their members to her and she provides a certain discount or percent to the gym. She has the knowledge I am looking to get about how to do business with these gyms, what are good practices, what are bad practices to stay away from, and more importantly how to close deals with them. I got in contact with her when I was on a Sales trip to Arizona. I wanted healthy prepared meals for the month I would be there so the gym I was working out at referred me to her company.  The meals they prepared were amazing and their customer service was great. She would also be a huge help for me in providing tips on how to sell to these gyms and how to get the word out about my service. She was happy to provide some advice for me through email, but she is a contact that I will have to continue to build a closer relationship with if I want it to yield good results. 

This was an awesome assignment. I enjoy networking and asking others for advice and guidance. I have realized that there are many people out there ready to help especially experienced entrepreneurs. I was surprised by how some of these people I had either not spoken to in a very long time or had barely known each other and they were still willing to help and provide their expertise. I think at a lot of networking events I am usually trying to find a way to provide my idea to others that can help me exploit the opportunity where as this assignment was more of learning form others that are in similar industries as id like to be in. Definitely a game changer for me as far as how I approach networking in the future.