Growing Your Social Capital

For this assignment, I had already made a lot of these connections and I was surprised that I haven't reached out to any of them for this class so far so this was a good experience to talk about my ideas with them.

1) This first interview is someone who I have worked with named Danny, he works in a similar business providing setups but only for larger events 

2) Domain Expert

3) I found this person because I worked with them previously and rented equipment from them, I reached out through cell phone because I already had his phone number

4) The favor that they did for me is I asked them a lot of questions about whether or not he liked being in the business and some important details about what he thinks I should know. I expect that in return, I will be able to maintain contact with him and work alongside him if I do get into the business.

5) Having this person in my network will enhance my ability to exploit an opportunity because I will be able to know what the market is like in this area and use the places he failed and succeeded to lead my decisions in the future.

1) The second interview I did was a production specialist who owns a lot of equipment and runs streaming services, his name is Dylan. 

2) Market Expert

3) I found this person because I have worked with them in the past to provide a live-production stream for a student organization that I work for. I contacted them through their cell phones because I already had it.

4) The favor that I asked of them was if I could meet up with them and tell them about my business pitch. I showed them the elevator pitch and they gave me advice on the types of competition that I will face in Gainesville. There are a lot of people trying to do similar things but none of them have done exactly what I am doing. In return, if I am successful I will be able to provide more business opportunities and advertising to them.

5) Having this person in my network will enhance my ability to exploit an opportunity because I will have a connection with someone who knows exactly what the market is like and a lot of other people. They will be able to tell me the competition that I will be facing, good times to do seek out my opportunities, and etc.

1) The last interview I did was an employee of Nintendo who works for their marketing. Her name is Sherry.

2) Industry supplier

3) I found this person because I had their contact from working with them a while back. I sent them an email and asked to set up a call to ask a few questions.

4) The nature of the exchange is that I asked a favor, to have her call me and look over my ideas and to get some advice about pricing and the best times to purchase. I also wanted to know if her company does any deals because as far as I know, they do not ever have sales. However, I was able to learn that sometimes they give out free copies of games to stores that want to demo them so that is something that I want to look into. In return, I would be able to promote the products that she is trying to market if I am successful in creating this business.

5) By keeping this person in my network I will be able to keep up to date on all the news on the Nintendo side of things. I should also make contact with someone from Microsoft and Sony so I have inside information from the companies that I will be renting equipment from. This is a really good contact to have because if I was to buy a console but learned from Nintendo staff that a newer, upgraded console is coming out soon I would be able to hold off. 

Reflection: This experience will help shape how I participate in future networking experiences because it helped to point out that I have a lot of connections but I need a lot more if I want to work in this business. All of the people I spoke to, although they seem to know a lot about the market and each other, definitely have many more contacts. Human capital is extremely important and if I am going to be able to make it I have to start making those connections for myself. It is not good enough to just have someone who has those connections, because they are more likely to respond to you if you have met them before. This experience differed from my networking experiences in the past because I have just kind of stumbled upon connections, rather than tried to go out of my way to find them. I realize after doing this assignment that a lot of these connections and information for these people are online and I just have to take the leap of trying to contact them. This is something that I assumed would not be possible because I thought this was all more secretive than it actually is. I have connections with all of the people I interviewed previously, but I spent a lot of time googling people and finding out that there are connections that I don't have that I can make. I will definitely be working on networking more with those connections that I found, even if I didn't personally interview them for this assignment. I hope that I am able to make a connection with them and interview for an assignment in the future.