Assignment 20A - Growing Your Social Capital

Assignment 20A – Growing Your Social Capital

1.     Domain Expert: For the domain expert, I talked to a manager at my local Publix. He had worked at Publix in every role possible before becoming manager so I knew he would be knowledgeable about the food industry as well as the food delivery industry. I go to this Publix about once a week, so it was easy to simply ask for a few minutes of his time to pitch my business idea. He said he thought my idea had a lot of potential and it would be interesting to see if something like that could team up with Publix, for example, to ensure that all the ingredients the chefs are using are coming from Publix. They might even give some sort of a discount for that. That is obviously a huge opportunity if my business could team up with a large-scale grocery store.

2.     Market Expert: I reached out to someone getting their Master’s in Marketing, because I knew they would be knowledgeable on how to market to millennials and early Generation Z’s. I knew this person from high school so it was easy to reach out to them. After explaining my business idea, she thought it was definitely something this age group would be interested in. Because of millennials’ and Generation Z’s priority of eating healthier, natural, and organic foods, she thought they would be willing to pay the extra price necessary for the service. She also told me that the best way to market to this age group is through social media and influencers, and that if I just get a couple of well-known influencers on board, the idea will take off. If I ever went through with this business idea, I would hope that I could utilize this person’s knowledge even further.

3.     Important industry supplier: For this component, I talked to an Uber driver because this is someone who has experience being a supplier in the type of industry I’m going into. It was easy to talk to one because I had to uber somewhere anyway. After explaining my business idea, he said that it shouldn’t be hard at all to find people willing to sign up as chefs. He also enforced what I was thinking about needing people to go through a background check and security clearance since they are going inside other people’s homes and using their kitchens. This person would help me exploit my opportunity by bringing knowledge of how Uber works and what Uber drivers need in order to be satisfied service-providers. After all, I would want my chefs as well as my customers to be satisfied.

Reflection: I am not very experienced in networking, so this was a learning experience for me. It helped me get out of my comfort zone, talk to new people, and hear what they had to say in regard to my business idea. They gave me a lot of useful advice and insight according to their expert knowledge. If I were to ever go through with my business, I would definitely be reaching out to them again to help expand my idea further. It is super important to have these connections in order to improve my product/service.