Assignment 20: Growing Your Social Capital

Interview 1: Adam

1) Adam is a supplements vender who markets his supplements on Amazon. He sells things like protein, preworkouts, and fat burners, but most importantly, protein bars and snacks.

2) Domain Expert

3) I go to bootcamps a lot and while I was attending a bootcamp I found Adam. I told him about what I was trying to do and described this assignment and he was more than happy to participate. 

4) The favor that they did for me was give very helpful tips on how to connect with suppliers for top brands. Having one of my main ingredients to be protein powder, the information he gave me will allow me to find and acquire a supplier for my ingredients. 

5) Keeping Adam in my network may allow me to get some key discounts for product that he sells.

Interview 2: Philip T.

1) Philip is a crossfitter who goes  to competitions to compete. He's exposed to a lot of people that I am trying to market to and spread the word of my business. He's also a trainer at some of the crossfit gyms that he goes to.

2) Expert on Market

3) I found Philip just like how I found Adam. Actually, Philip was Adam's personal trainer when I met with him. Philip connected through passions for both working out and playing football. However, our conversation left those two subjects and drifted towards the Bulk Bite idea. I showed him my elevator pitch to see how effective it may be.

4) Philip reviewed my elevator pitch and gave me some helpful tips on how I can market more to my customers. He said not to be so much cut and dry, but to be more lively when I'm talking about my product so I can show people how passionate I am about Bulk Bites. He wants me to make a new pitch and to get back to him on it.

5) Keeping Philip in my network is key because he is a very verbal person and the fact that he travels a lot to many different places, gives me an outlet to spreading the word about my new business.

Interview 3: Brian

1) Brian is a producer of an awesome protein company called GENEPRO. It's a medical grade protein that he markets to people and businesses. Brian is actually one of the suppliers for Adam.

2) Important Supplier

3) When I was connecting with Adam and telling him about the kind of people I needed to interview, he recommended that I see Brian. He told me that he was a supplier for his business and that he could give me some insight for my business. So, I called him up and scheduled a day we can meet in person. From there, I showed him my idea napkin.

4) The favor that he did for me was that he reviewed my idea napkin to supply me with some feedback on how my skills and abilities may help me land some supplier deals. The return expectation was to get back to him in the future if I needed help with finding suppliers for the protein aspect of my business.

5) Keeping Brian in my network will allow me to get key information on how I should go about getting a reliable supplier. Maybe when this business starts to boom, I'll need a big supplier which is where he would come in. Right now, I would probably be satisfied with just Adam's discount on protein.

Reflect

Going through these interviews was very helpful. I discovered a lot of new information on the industry and market itself. This experience will shape how I will participate in future networking events by making me more comfortable in speaking with people on a business level. I noticed that while I was connecting with these individuals, I was fumbling over my words because I was getting a little nervous. If I was more relaxed and calm, I feel that I would appear as more professional and prepared. This experience definitely differed from networking experiences in the past because I feel that I needed to say the right words for these networks. I could probably fumble over my words in the past interviews because it was with people I already knew. These people were new, which carried a sense of how should I tackle these interviews. But overall, I think I made some good progress on expanding on my social capital.