20A - Growing Your Social Capital

20A - Growing Your Social Capital  

• Domain Expert: Professor Adam Winkler. He is a specialist in American constitutional law and the supreme court. He teaches at UCLA as a professor of law. He has written many books including 'Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America' and 'We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights'. He is one of the top twenty law professors for citations by the supreme courts. 
• Market Expert: Dario Kaplan, he has worked with conducting customer research in my area. He is an expert in finding the targeted customer. He has owned and operated guns since he turned the age of 18 and has been searching to find ways to get Americans to acknowledge gun abuse these past couple years. He taught me a lot about the ways I can make a difference with my business concept. 
• Supplier in my industry: Emma Gonzalez, a student from the Parkland mass shooting that had spoke at the anti-gun rally in Ft. Lauderdale. In her speech she states "It's time for victims to be the change that we need to see". She has become so influential and the video of her speech that went viral spoke to millions of Americans. She truly opened my eyes by coming forward after losing 17 of her classmates to talk about these issues and spread awareness on gun abuse and mass shootings. 
• How I found and contacted these people:
• I had the pleasure of speaking with Winkler over the phone because one of my best friends went to UCLA and had him as a professor. She was able to get me in contact with him. 
• I met with Kaplan due to the fact my father knows him really well. He was able to talk to me about what my best strategy would be to go about my business idea. 
• I got to meet Emma Gonzalez at the Ft. Lauderdale rally because I attended it due to it being so close to my home town, so I was able to contact her this week over the phone to speak on the issue.
• Nature of exchange: 
• Winkler spoke to me about his teachings and the books he's written. He offered me insight to the ways to protect our country for gun abuse and told me he was happy i had reached out and am trying to do something about this issue to protect our country. In return, I told him I would do my best to get people acknowledging that there is a way to try to get the recognition needed to attain more gun control laws. 
• Kaplan explained to me the best way to market my business idea and he believes throwing non-profit events to get people talking about these issues would be my best bet. He said he'd love to attend one of my events in the future.
• Gonzalez was happy that I came to the rally and fully supports trying to get more people to realize how bad the gun problems in our country are increasing every year. She went through so much trauma and feels no one ever deserves to go through that. When I spoke to her on the phone, she loved my idea to raise awareness and maybe start a go-fund-me to show the government that people are serious about this issue and they need to do something about it, but she said to me it all starts with us-the future leaders of this generation. 
• How will including this person in your network enhance your ability to exploit an opportunity? and how have you reflected on this assignment?
• Now that I have had contact with these people, I have their contact information and could always call them if I had a question about the way to go about my business idea. Including these people in my network will greatly enhance my ability to exploit the opportunity of raising awareness for gun abuse/mass shootings and trying to stop it. Being able to say I have contact with these people will show my customer segment that I am serious about this and that I have the knowledge and resources needed to make my business concept the best it can be. This has been a huge eye opener for me and networking with these people have made me truly interested in starting this business in the future.