20A – Growing Your Social Capital

I had a difficult time with this project. Getting people to make contact back with me was difficult, but I was able to get a little response from each of the people I spoke with.

Domain expert

• My domain expert is a certified psychologist and I have been talking on and off to her about what I would like to do. She has been certified for over 5 years.
•  I made contact with this person through a familiar psychology office that I used when in my hometown. She is friends with my old psychologist and has been interested in the kind of service I am trying to create.
• I spoke face-to-face with this person. I dropped in the office to ask my questions and see how she felt about my pitch.
•   She will be a great person for me to bounce ideas off of and see what is ethical going forward with my idea. There are certain boundaries that I am trying to stay within and not violate any of the patients’ confidentiality.

Market expert

• This person came from the same office as above. She is the office manager and oversees patient files in organization. The faces she sees come into the office are between ages 15 and 30. She was not able to tell me much more.
• She will be able to help me when I am trying to determine exactly the kind of people I want to target. She also is able to help organize the system when targeting these people. She sees 
• I also spoke fact-to-face with her.
• Having her in my network will be ideal when trying to decide what age group and geographical area I should hit. She keeps up with the stats of mental health in the country.

Supplier

• I was unable to get a response from someone in this area
• I tried contacting the company that would be competing with my idea www.betterhelp.com. There was no answer and I thought it would be the best option.
•  I have been seeing a lot of advertisements about this website since starting research on my business idea. Thought they could give me some insight on their target market and how they feel their business is and how they have approved.
• I found the president online and tried contacting him through email and a phone call. Both went unanswered.
• I thought including them in my network would enhance my company.  We could try to work on some projects together to improve mental health around the world through campaigns.

Reflections

                This task was very stressful as I felt crunched for time and was unsure of the responses I would get giving my pitch. However, after getting positive responses, it gave me more confidence to make contact with people when I may need help. This experience was a little more in-depth than the past networking I have done.