Growing My Social Capital

Domain Expert in my Industry:

1. My uncle who worked in California is the person I chose for this.  He worked in the technology industry for decades and made deals in linking two companies up to work together.
2. He is filling the domain expert spot.
3. He is my uncle so I was able to just send him an email.  
4. He gave me information on how he has made deals in the past for companies he has worked for and did not ask me for anything in return because I am his nephew.
5. He has many contacts in the technology industry that I could use as well as his prior experience in situations I could face would be very helpful to have.

Expert on my Market:

1. My cousin who lives in California is the person I chose for this.  He works for Google and is in their customer experience sector.
2. He is filling the market expert spot.
3. He is my cousin so I was able to just send him a text.
4. He works in customer experience with Google services so he knows how to market their services to everybody.  While this is not a specific market, it still contains my target market.  His knowledge would be helpful in the future for my service and he did not ask me for anything in return because I am his cousin.
5. His knowledge in knowing target markets and having real world experience with it is valuable information, especially since it is a technology area.

Important Supplier to my Industry:

1. My other cousin who works in Chicago is the person I chose for this.  He has sold insurance to major transportation companies.
2. He is filling the supplier spot.
3. He is my cousin so I just sent him a text.
4. He gave me information on how he works with transportation companies as well as who some of his clients are in that area of work.  Sine we are cousins he did not ask for anything in return and was just happy to help.
5. His knowledge will help me in that I now have an idea on how it is to work with transportation companies, even if it is just from an insurance standpoint.

I learned that family connections can really help, especially when it comes to networking.  I am very lucky in that most of the people in my family are in business or technology related fields, so it was not too difficult when trying to find people that fit each part of the assignment.  Moving forward, I plan on continuing to use family connections as they are a great tool if you have them.  No, I have only ever used family connections in the past, so this was no different.  I will say that I need to start working on getting connections outside of my family for the future, but for the time being family networking connection is fine.