Growing My Social Capital

Person #1

1. The first person I spoke to is named Charlie Soo. Charlie Soo currently owns a Thai restaurant in Palm Beach Gardens but originally worked on Wall Street before he thought of opening up a business of his own. The restaurant has been doing very well, and the skills that he learned while working on Wall Street helped him greatly in creating this business as well as making it grow. 

2. Charlie Soo is a domain expert since he is in the food industry, which is what my business would be. Charlie could also fit in the market expert as well, but I thought that domain expert would be a better category since his business is what my business would be minus the drive through aspect of it. 

3. I found him because my parents really enjoy eating at this restaurant and I called and asked to speak with him for one of my class assignments. 

4. I simply asked Charlie a few questions about his business- there wasn't really any 'return favor' involved. 

5. Including this person in my network could enhance my ability to exploit an opportunity by asking him advice about the steps he took in opening his own restaurant. Since a high percent of most restaurants that recently go into business go under, I would ask him how he managed to make his restaurant so successful with the other competitions around him. 

Person #2

1. I spoke to Dalton Thomas, who used to work as a bartender/ bouncer for the bars Fat Daddy's and Rowdy's at midtown. He has worked for this company for four years.

2. I chose Dalton to be the market expert for my company. Although my business would be desirable for any age group, since the food group sushi isn't classified as a certain age group preference, I want to open my business in a college town. This is very similar to the bars Dalton works at, since a bar isn't limited to a certain age group (of course those 21+), but since it is located at a college town, the business would be targeting college students. Therefore, both my business idea and the business Dalton works at targets customers of a similar age group.

3. I have some friends who know him and I have seen him at work before. So I asked my friends a way to contact him to ask him some questions of this assignment.

4. The nature of this exchange is the same as the one before. Nothing was asked in return, he simply agreed to help me in my assignment.

5. Although Dalton doesn't own this business, he has been working for this company for many years. Establishing this contact with him could give me an unique inside look to how a business operates from the inside.

Person #3

1. Garret Mano is a UF graduate who studied Food Science and currently works at Publix as he develops his own start up delivery app.

2. I am filling Garret into the supplier slot, since many restaurants get their food from Publix and not necessarily whole sale markets. 

3. Garret is currently dating my friend's roommate and I told my friend's roommate about the assignment. She invited him over and we chatted a bit for this assignment. 

4. Similarly to the other two people I spoke to, he agreed to talk to me about how his job works and the other companies Publix supplies for and there weren't any requests from him. 

5. This person can enhance my ability to exploit an opportunity because if my business would actually come to fruition, I could ask him about how I can go about Publix being the supplier for my sushi drive through business. 

Reflection

This experience differed from the assignments in the past because the requirements of people to speak to to complete this assignment were much narrower than the previous ones. I found this exercise to be harder than the other ones because it required me to put myself out there a lot more, but as always it garnered more of a reward, as I practiced my ability to speak with people I don't know and network with strangers. Overall, I found it to be a very beneficial and fruitful experience.