Person #1
The first person I talked to was the CEO of a company called Bullymake. He had a background in digital marketing and decided to start his own dog subscription company. Colin filled the Domain Expert role because he knows a lot about the subscription service industry and about dogs. I found the person by sending an email to the contact email listed on the site and he responded immediately saying he was willing to help me. He did me a favor by calling me immediately and spoke with me for 30 minutes to answer all the questions I had. In return, he expected nothing from me and was just being nice about answering my questions. Including this person in my network will help me deal with challenges I could face going forward.
Person #2
The second person I talked to was a person named Chris that works in sales for Trunk Club. Trunk Club is a service offered by Nordstrom that allows for the consumer to order clothing items and try on clothes then only keep the ones they like and send back the rest. Chris filled the market expert part of the role because he knows a lot about logistics and shipping products. While the company is not a subscription service, Chris has to understand shipping and return orders as well as ensure high quality of the items that go into the boxes. I contacted Chris by calling the number on the Trunk Club website and he answered the phone and said he could answer my questions for me but did not request anything in return. If I run into logistics problems in the future I can reach out to Chris for help in solving them.
Person #3
The third person I called was named Sarah and she works at Pet Naturals as a customer service agent. Sarah knows a lot about my industry because her company provides products to dog subscription service companies that put their product in their boxes. She told me that the company BarkBox places large orders for their product to put in their box so they can supply all their subscribers. Sarah would be considered the Supplier in this industry because of the company she works for. Sarah was happy to give me information and in the future could be a contact to use to get supplies for subscription boxes.
Reflection
This experience differed a lot from previous networking because I was reaching out to people cold and speaking to them through the phone. This was one of the first times I have randomly called people but it surprised me how helpful people are in wanting to help others. Going forward in networking events I will be less nervous when approaching new people.
Ben,
ReplyDeleteI found it hard to find people that fit the exact criteria for this assignment but believe that I made it work like you did. I think knowing people who work in similar departments could help a lot. For example, in your second interview you talked with someone who was in the clothing business which obviously isn't related to dogs but you were able to find out about a smaller subject such as shipping products and how to go about it.