20A – Growing Your Social Capital

WHO I KNOW, NOT WHAT I KNOW

DOMAIN EXPERT: Jose - Personal trainer in South Florida (YMCA). Jose is somebody who has been involved in the fitness industry for over 5 years. He has been personal training clients for most of his career and has plenty of experience managing routines.
  • Fortunately, Jose was easier to find because of his connection with many of my friends back home who reside and have worked out in my town in South Florida. Our method of contact was through phone. 
  • Being that Jose has experience training people outside of a gym setting, he gave me feedback that helped me gather ideas on the type of clients I should be pursuing in my concept of a mobile fitness center. 


MARKET EXPERT: Davis from Crunch Fitness  - Manager on client services, sales, and personal training. He transitioned from personal trainer to sales expert in the fitness industry and understands what clients are looking for and need in a fitness regimen. 
  • Davis was a manager at the gym I used to sell memberships for a period of time. I was able to contact him through email after coming across his business card. 
  • Davis was a little less comforting in giving me feedback. His idea was that it's a lot easier for myself to eventually rent out my own studio and have people travel to my location instead of having to travel and carry equipment around. 


SUPPLIER: Gym source fitness equipment (Organization as a whole) - A smaller business location that sells fitness equipment to fitness centers and homes. 
  • This contact was most difficult due to having no connections and having to google search contact information for this request. The contact method was email.
  • Unfortunately, not much feedback was given on my idea, but they did acknowledge that plenty of people buy equipment and have a similar business that relates to my concept, confirming my expectations on the idea. 


Being that I have a closer connection to the first two people, I will be able to seek out their help in the near future if I were to pursue this concept. These individuals can help me with clients, ideas. and even life experiences that will put me above any competitors in the area. This networking experience is similar to previous experiences in reaching out to people, the only difference is that everything was conducted through telecommunications instead of asking to meet later for coffee and have a more involved conversation. 




Comments

  1. Scott HassonMarch 29, 2020 at 8:56 PM

    Hey Joaquin, it was good to see that you were also to make connections with professionals thanks to your existing social network back home. It's also beneficial that you were able to get honest, constructive feedback from the links you contacted. You found a perfect supplier in the form of a company that sells gym equipment for people to use at home, that should be a useful contact in the future, good job overall with your post!

    ReplyDelete
  2. WIll Davis IVMarch 29, 2020 at 9:14 PM

    Hi,
    Growing your social capital is a very good trait to put into practice. This exercise really allowed us to practice building our professional network. Furthermore, you were able meet people that will help you to enter mutually beneficial relationships. Mutually beneficial relationships will make your proposed product stronger will more ideas and opinion to consider.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Kevin RetanaMarch 30, 2020 at 7:51 AM

    Hey Joaquin,
    You seem to have a quality team put in place. That all have talent that will contribute to the success of your business idea. The marketing idea is a good start but there could be better ways to reach more business exposure. For when it comes to equipment email is good source to contact the distributor but calling could also be a better form and more personal. Great post!

    ReplyDelete

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