20A Social Capital

1.       (Domain Expert) Hunter is a charter captain who has been guiding out of the big bend area. He has 20 years of experience on the water with many of those years spent tournament fishing. Hunter linsey is my domain expert because he has developed his own custom jig heads and knows what it takes to sell his ideas. I found Hunter through the tournament trail and I have been picking his mind on ways to move to the next step with my product. Hunter has already gone through all struggles of developing and selling a homemade product and can provide me with much insight into what it takes.

2.       (Expert in my market) Matt is the south eastern territory director for the company Navico. Navico owns Lowrance, Simrad, and B&G and is leading the world in marine electronics. Matt’s insight into targeting certain markets and conducting customer research would be extremely beneficial for me and my product.  The market he targets is slightly different than my but both of our products attract the same customers so it will work nicely. Simrad is one of my sponsors so I met Matt through several new product seminars.

3.       (Important supplier) Mike is the General Manager at Bass Pro Shops in Gainesville, Florida. He has a major influence in what products gets sold in his store therefore he and Bass Pro shops would be a very important supplier. My tournament partner works at Bass Pro Shops and that is how I came into contact with Mike Obrien. Knowing Mike Obrien and selling him on my product would put me 3 steps ahead of any other starting up product.

This targeting experience actually caused me to thinking deeply into different ways for me to get my product exposure. This exercise definitely made me more confident because I didn’t realize how wide of a network I already have. This networking exercise was pretty similar to some of the exercises I have done in the past.