Today for Haller, we had the opportunity to meet with two key members of our consulting project for Carrigart. Erin McLaughlin, the Ireland Site Director for All People Be Happy, our main consulting client for the people and businesses in Carrigart, and Pitt Business EIR Joe Pietropola, who took part in helping Samsung boost revenue by over five times in four years.

At 11 AM, we got to meet with Erin, who told us so much about the demographics, key areas, and community culture in Carrigart. It was fascinating to hear that the members are not as receptive to technology, leading to us revising our consulting plans. We prepared for this meeting by writing down five questions and giving our first rough draft of our scope. To say the least, we were humbled. We gave questions as if the client knew more than us, and that was our mistake we learned from. Otherwise, we still got a lot of valuable information from her.

At around 12, we met with Joe Pietropola, and we learned a LOT of valuable information from him too. He gave us a lot of advice regarding our consulting project since he runs his own company, too. His professional journey was super impressive, because he did a bunch of work with both Samsung and DICKS Sporting Goods, both on scaling their revenue massively. We learned a lot from him, as he gave us pretty much all his insight that relates to our consulting project over the last few years. He mentioned falling in love with the problem and not the solution, finding the symptoms and asking “why” for the cause, and giving realistic solutions that have short, medium, or long term. He gave us a BUNCH of questions we could ask the residents of Carrigart, too! Our group feels much more confident in creating our scope with this information.