1.
Who
they are and what their background is: FiLIP, smartwatch for kids
a.
How
they are a domain expert: For this one, all of my questions were already
answered on the FiLIP website. They sell a smart watch for kids that allows the
parents to track their child. The parent can even set up boundaries and if the
child leaves the boundary, the parent will be alerted. Five contacts can be
added to the watch which allows the child to call any of those contacts. An
emergency button can be pushed which will call the primary contact and if they
do not answer, each contact will be called until someone answers.
b.
How
you found the person: I google searched tracking devices for kids and found the
smart watch.
c.
Nature
of exchange: I found all of the information I needed from questions that had
already been answered.
d.
How
will including this person enhance your ability to exploit an opportunity: The
most important piece of information I received from this is that it was created
by engineers in Norway and Europe and the maker is AMTI in Virginia. This is
valuable because I had no idea who I would find to create the device. Now, I
can talk to AMTI and see if there is a manufacturer closer to my location.
2.
Who
they are and what their background is: Kyle Lemmon, works for asecurelife.com
e.
How
they are a market expert: Kyle is a market expert because he has had a lot of
experience in home security and personal security
f.
How
you found the person: Google search of self-defense items brought me to this
website
g.
Nature
of exchange: I was given a lot useful information about self-defense items and
which are the best in his opinion.
h.
How
will including this person enhance your ability to exploit an opportunity: Kyle
finds the best products and helps promote them through asecurelife.com.
Eventually, I could get him to test my product and hopefully promote it as
well.
3.
Who
they are and what their background is: Jared Maciaszek, salesmen for Cutting
Edge Products
i.
How
they are an important supplier: Cutting Edge Products sells personal
self-defense items
j.
How
you found the person: I google searched personal alarms and found their
website.
k.
Nature
of exchange: Jared provided me with information about how many personal alarms
Cutting Edge Products sells each year which I think is helpful for myself to
create a goal. He informed me that they sell close to 1500 personal alarms
annually.
l.
How
will including this person enhance your ability to exploit an opportunity:
Jared could help me with selling my product through Cutting Edge Products. They
have an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau, their value is honesty, and
they are committed to God.
Reflect
I haven’t had much experience
with networking. So, this experience helped me decide which questions and
topics were the most important when communicating with these important people
in my industry. It has helped me to be more confident when discussing my
product.

That is really neat you found a company that was so close to your product for the domain expert. I struggled in determining in whoI was going to contact and lucked out through friends in connecting with people. This definitely helped me in improving my networking skills as well. I don’t think I am going to keep most of mine in my network though. It sounds like you should definitely keep some of your people though!
ReplyDeleteHi Brandi, great post! I think you did a really great job at finding a variety of outside information online. It was interesting to read the different takes by the three different types of businesses. I'm sure that all of this information could be synthesized to come up with the best plan for your business. Keep up the great work!
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