Growing My Social Capital

Domain Expert

Guy Denig - Service Manager of Century GMC in Tampa

Guy works as the service manager in a large car dealership in the middle of Tampa. He has worked in the service industry for cars for over 30 years and knows everything there is about the service side of the car business. I found Guy because he works at my family dealership, so I contacted him simply with a phone call. I believe that contacting him gave me a lot of information on servicing a car that I did not know. I had never thought about the insurance or warranty aspect of a service fix until I talked to him on the phone. He gave me some advice that will definitely help me be more successful in the future. He told me that the key to my business is doing really minor fixes and making sure I do them quickly and with quality work. This is going to enhance my company because he is experienced in this field and I can trust his advice.

Expert on my market

Tim Moore - Tim's Maintenance Repair Gainesville, Fl

Tim has been in the mobile service business in Gainesville from 2006 and has run a successful business for a long time. Tim does more major repairs and over a variety of different motor vehicles. I was able to get Tim's number off his website and take a couple minutes out of his day to talk to me about my business idea. His advice to me was to make sure I focus on the college students that do not necessarily have time to go out and get their car fixed. He thinks that convenient, quick work is going to be the key to my success.

Advanced Auto Parts - University Ave

I called Advanced Auto Parts and was able to speak to the manager of the store on University. He did not give me any information on his background in the parts industry, but he did say that his store will offer discounts for orders in bulk. This would be beneficial to me because I could buy a lot of wiper blades, or car batteries for a discounted price and then install them and make a profit off of the item. This is good news because I truly did not know the best place for me to get the parts I need in order to run my service business.

Reflection: I enjoyed this assignment because it really made me sit down and think about how I need to network with and who can give me the best advice to be successful. From all three of my phone calls, I realized that every aspect on my company must be organized and efficient if I want to be successful. In future networking events, I will do the same process as I did this time and sit down and really pick out a target audience and then go from there.