Growing Your Social Capital

Jack owns a safe store here in Gainesville. He is filling the roles as the Domain expert. He sells safes that keep guns secure. I would consider him to be Domain expert. He knows the kind of ways that people store their guns and knows a lot of people in the safe and security industry in the area. I have known Jack personally for a long time. I sent him a email. He did me a favor by giving me a couple tips on how the lock could be designed and how the locking mechanism could work. The return expectation is that if I ever decide to produce the lock, Jack wants to sell it in his shop. Adding Jack to my social network is big. He said that if I ever design and produce it, he wants to sell it in his shop. So now, I already have one potential store that I could sell it in. That is big way to exploit an opportunity.

Don is the market expert. He sells vehicle guns safes. He sells the type of safes that lock to the seat by a cable. I found out about Don because Jack gave me his contact information. I sent Don an email with the YouTube link to my elevator pitch and asked him to give me some feedback. I also asked him who the biggest buyer of his product is. As of now Don has not responded to my email. Adding Don to my social network will allow to get some information on the demographics of the market. If he says that a bunch of people from a different demographic are buying his product, that will allow me to exploit an opportunity into another market.

Steve is the president of Liberty Safe company. They are one of the biggest personal safe companies in the country. Steve will fill the supplier role. I found out about Steve by searching ‘Liberty safe company president’ on google. His name popped up. I found his information on Linkedin. I send him a message containing the link to my elevator pitch asking if he could watch it and give me some feedback. If I can get him to respond to me, he would be a huge get for my social network. With all of his knowledge, he could definitely help me exploit an opportunity.

Reflect: This assignment gave me some experience on how to contact people that I haven’t talked to before. It will be very helpful and give me some ideas on how to participate in any future networking events. It definitely gave me some confidence on emailing people that I don’t know. This differed from my experience in the past because in the past I talked to everyone in person.