Week 7 EOC: Progress Towards My Professional Contacts

Part of being a business owner is building up your professional contact list. These people will help you advance or help you with your career along the way. These may be someone you meet at an event, or just anywhere in your day to day life. When you meet these people you need to ALWAYS ask for a business card. Some of the absolute professional contacts you need for starting a business are a banker, an accountant, an insurance agent, and a lawyer. I’m going to talk to you about my experience in gaining these four important contacts business cards. For each I did an initial research on where to start. I began with my location and then reviewed what the different company sites had to offer me. The ones that looked more professional and had many qualified people to help me were the ones that I was more drawn to.

I went out on a day that I had free to find all of these. I made sure that I was dressed in business attire so that people would respect me more. For the banker I went to Chase Bank because they are a well known, respected bank and you can find them in more places than one. When I went in I talked to a nice gentleman that greeting me at the door. I told him that I was a student who needed a business card from a business banker in order to help build my business plan. He was very helpful and gave me one. For the accountant, I found an office that had many CPA’s that deal daily with businesses.  I asked for a card and they were very kind to show me where they were located. For the lawyer, the company I researched was no longer there, so this was poor research on my part, but there were other lawyers within the business park I was in. I asked if they had an IP lawyer and they gave me the card to someone who could closely help me with that.  Finally, with the insurance agent I have different story. I was able to meet her through a well respected photographer, Sharon Sampsel. She was able to give a brief description on how she would be able to help me as a photographer.  This is an example of it’s all about who you know.

Knowing the kind of contacts you need is a good start to being a great business owner.