- I emailed Dr. Sharon Richardson, a high school guidance counselor, to find industry expertise. As a guidance counselor, Dr. Richardson gives career advice to students every day. More importantly, many of these students are not college-bound, and therefore will be low-wage workers. I found her name and email address on her high school's website. I requested information from her about the most effective ways of giving advice, and how to compel people to succeed. I hope she does me the favor of returning my email with her advice. This advice will be crucial in the development of my sessions.
- I emailed Bill Falasco, a manager at Amscot Financial, to find market expertise. I found Bill on Linkedin. Since Bill works for a company that targets low-income workers, I asked if he would be willing to partner up with a business like mine in advertising, or at least if he had some advice on how to effectively reach this population. This information will help me plan a marketing strategy.
- I emailed Barbara Share, the author of book Refuse to Choose!: Use All of Your Interests, Passions, and Hobbies to Create the Life of Your Dreams, to find supplier expertise. I read Barbara's book, and I feel that she has supplier knowledge in my industry, because her book could be used as an outline of what to teach in the sessions, and could be recommended to customers. I asked if she knew of any groups or organizations that had used her book as a base for guidance, and if she could put me in contact with those organizations. The more people I know who do research on this topic, the more people in my network I can reach out to in order to develop my business plan.
This experience definitely differs from my past networking experiences, as I've never emailed a random person to ask business questions before. Even more than the advice they give, the connection I make with these individuals will benefit me as I enter this industry. Doing this now will make it much easier to reach out to people in the future.
Hello there Abby you really got good people to fulfill the roles of the domain market experts as well as your industry suppliers. I definitely can relate towards feeling nervous to talk to people. But the fact that you did is just one step in the right direction.
ReplyDeleteHi Abby,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that this exercise was much different than the other interview assignments that we have completed so far. Finding someone with the right industry knowledge to interview forces you to take a closer look at the details of your business idea. I found this to be the most challenging part of the assignment. However, once I got on the right track with my emails I found that the questions I had regarding my business were not difficult to cultivate. This assignment helped me to understand some of the key areas that I must work on to make my business idea work. Great job, Darren.