Growing Your Social Capital

1. A Civil engineer in Georgia.

2. Domain Expert

3. My cousin is a civil engineer who just recently graduated, so she did not have a lot of experience, but she was able to get me in contact with a coworker who has been working for years, and I was able to sit on the phone with them for an extended period of time.

4. The favor they did for me was to sit down on the phone and discuss what they do for a living and then listen to my proposal and give me insight to its plausibility. And in turn and I told my cousin to buy them lunch for me and I used venmo to send her the money.

5. Now that I have an in with a couple civil engineers, I will be able to consult them when I need help with ideas concerning their specialties for future reference!

1. The head of a taxi company called "Curb" in Miami.

2. Market Expert

3. I googled taxi driving companies in Miami, Florida and called multiple until someone in charge was willing to talk to me for a few minutes over the phone.

4. Once again the favor they did me was to sit and talk to me over the phone even though it was not a very long exchange. I was able to get some insight on what they do and how they would react to a new express lane being built. In return for his time, I ended up promising him that if I ever used a taxi service in Miami, that it would be his!

5. Including him in my network was most definitely useful. It opened up my eyes to the potential of giving deals to taxi companies if I were to build an express lane so that they would pay less to use it, but they use it so often that it would be worth it for both sides. 

1. An executive from the Florida Department of Transportation who dealt with "SunPass"

2. Supplier to Industry

3. It was not easy to contact this man! But after a number of phone calls and literally 30 minutes of being transferred and put on hold, I was able to contact someone in the department that dealt with SunPass.

4. Once again, the favor given to me was to find time to add me to their day and talk to me about SunPass. In return I applauded him for his hard work and promised to drive safe and smart at all times. 

5. Including him into my network was helpful in the insight that he provided, but I was not given any personal information and told I probably wouldn't be able to reach him again as he is generally very busy, so in the long run the I won't be able to gain much more than I already have from him, but it was still a cool experience and somewhat of an honor to have talked to him.

Reflect:
I was really surprised at the success I was able to achieve in just reaching so many people in powerful positions to speak to. I consider myself lucky and don't expect to be able to do it often! But this was an eye opening experience in which I was able to see things from other peoples points of view who have some experience in an idea that I have. This experience was very different from an previous ones I've had as I was able to talk to people in high positions in companies that I don't normally get the opportunity to.