Growing Your Social Capital

Before I begin with my information for this post, I will say that this assignment was quite possibly on of the most difficult ones I have done so far in my college career, and part of it was simply that I really did’t know where to start. So with that being said, here are my three new people. 

1. Ms. Meeks was my first interviewee. She is a head supervisor of an animal shelter in Escambia county in the panhandle of Florida and when I asked her, she said she had been with that particular shelter for about 10 years. She is filling the slot of domain expert. I came into contact with Ms. Meeks actually when I was going with an old friend from high school to look about adopting a dog, and while he was looking around and getting to know some of the pets, I talked to some of the workers, who then introduced me to Ms. Meeks who was working at the time. She was a very nice and professional lady from the start and she seemed to be very interested when I told her about the whole process we’ve had to go through with this class about developing our ideas. Her favor to me was a bit more insider knowledge on what sort of goes on behind the scenes with the wholes in reporting the actual percentage of pets euthanized in some shelters. While I don’t live in the shelter anymore, there wasn’t really a return favor that was requested, other than her liking me to reach out if I ever do go about butting my service idea into action. She enhanced my ability to exploit an opportunity by telling me kind of where some of the legal loopholes lay at least in the realm of the animal shelters so when I put them together with the hotel side of things, I can work with that. 
2. Mr. Reishus was my second interviewee. He is the owner of two local motels in Montana- the sort of motels that I would like to partner with in my business plan. And because of this, he is filling the role of the supplier to the industry. With my particular idea, I want to find a way to connect the animal shelters and the motels, but it would be the actual motel owners that are the suppliers of the service to potential customers so in that aspect, it fits. Mr. Reishus is actually my paternal great-uncle, so he wasn’t really a stretch to find and I am in pretty regular contact with him so I was able to just call him up and discuss the assignment. In our exchange I talked with him about if someone were to propose the idea of bringing pets in as permanent fixtures for his hotel, what would he say? I was glad to hear him say that he actually really liked the idea. He operates out of a very small town in Montana and because I am also from a small town, we both recognize the need for their to be a unique and drawing-in factor of the town to supply it with visitors. My great uncle agreed with me wholeheartedly that my idea serves exactly this purpose so in the manner of favors here, he said that if I do get this idea up and going, I have to place pets in his motels first and then he’ll do networking for me all around the state of Montana so he said. As far as exploiting an opportunity, I feel like if it were able to work in his motels, I would then know more about how to deal with the small business and local aspect that is a central part of my plan. 
3. Mr. Kamase was my third interviewee and by far the hardest to find/figure out. Mr. Kamase works in the hotel marketing industry and currently is working out of northern Arkansas. He is filling the slot of expert on the market for this assignment. I made contact with Mr. Kamase through a cousin of mine who is working with the R&D department of Walmart in Bentonville, Arkansas. I guess at some sort of professional function, my cousin met Mr. Kamase and then because he knew I was in this class, thought he might be a valuable person for me to talk to. Our exchange was one over email and over about a week or so. He was extremely helpful and curious about not only the course in general, but also my specific idea. When I first told him, he said that every one of his three daughters would absolutely love the idea, so that made me feel good. For the favor portion and networking, he kind of gave me an explanation as to how contracting works with exterior entities (like an animal shelter for instance) in the hotel industry. Honestly, after this conversation, I realized just how hard it may be to actually go through all the steps of implementing my idea. Nonetheless, it was a very eye-opening exchange. 

For my reflections on this, I think that my confidence level in the professional aspect of my life boosted a lot. So far, most of the professional working people I deal with are at hospitals where I volunteer, so those are more instructor-student roles I have with them. This was the first time I ever really toyed around with the networking idea to people that I have very little in common with and putting it all out there from the get-go. And I will say, it was a sort of nerve-wracking assignment, but it gave me a push in a good direction for reaching out to people in the future that I might never have thought to do so otherwise.