“I Don’t Have Business Cards Because I’m Green”
Recently I was introduced to a young journalist, who naturally asked the quintessential networking question: Do you have a business card?
For many years I was on the opposite end of that question, asking anyone whom I felt was in a position I wanted to be, or had the power to plug me in, for their card. If I was fortunate they would dig in their purse or wallet and pull out a card.
Before everyone carried a cell phone or had their own website, Twitter, Facebook, business cards were the key.
I’ve had a business card for every position I’ve held. Now, I don’t have a card nor do I want one. For starters, what would I list on the card? In today’s world, no one has only one job. There is the 9-5, the 6-10, the side hustle and the “I do this because I love it but it doesn’t pay and I don’t care” project. How exactly do you fit that all on one card?
I’ve been handed cards like this before and never took them seriously.
Then you have people who are a little creative but still leave you clueless as to what they really have to offer.
I have a stack of business cards that I’ve collected over the years and while I’m sure that 90% of the people no longer work at the places listed on the card, I still can’t seem to throw them out. Consider them relics of a time past; a time when people interacted personally and had real conversations. This was long before we could scan each others barcodes or text.
I don’t have business cards because even when I did, I barely gave them out. I’d push past my business card holder (actually I had three, two of which were college graduation gifts), grabbing for my phone and have the interested party enter their information and vice versa.
While I do care, immensely, about the environment and watching my waste “Going Green” is just one small part of the reason why I’m card-less. However, no one can refute my response. They laugh gingerly and it spins the conversation in a completely different direction, one in which they drop the issue of why I don’t have a card.
I could just tell them to google me, but that would make me sound like an egomaniac.
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