Networking and the Design of Contact Cards

I know your first question is: What is a contact card? Frankly, I am on a mission to get the name changed to contact cards from business cards. When meeting people with no jobs or people that want to change careers, I would ask them for a business card. The reply was quite often "Kathy, I don't have a business, thus no card."

While teaching a seminar, I threw out the challenge buy games asking what we could call this card instead of a business card. The next morning a young man walked in and said "Kathy, I know what this should be called. It is a contact card". Now how simple is that!

In my view, it is essential to have your updated information on your contact card with you at all times. Notice that I said "updated" information. If you want to be viewed as a true professional, remember it looks tacky to take your card and make corrections in front of the person before you to give it to them.

WHAT SHOULD BE ON YOUR CONTACT CARDS?

If you are a business:

Your name prominently displayed

Your company name and logo

Your full address

Your website address

Phone number

Email address

If you are an individual with no position:

Your name

Address (Get a PO Box if do not want to use your home address)

Phone number

Email address.

(Note I left position you are looking for off - there are too many variations on a position title these days and you don't want to lose an interview because of job title)

By the way, nothing frustrates me more when a contact card that does not have a mailing address on it. When I go to Crisis on Infinite Earths a person a Transformer I have to go to their website and, hopefully, find it there. No, I do not believe this is the way to drive people to your website. If I am sitting down to write notes I am not in the mood to go through your website. I am wanting to Barbie with your personally.

Finally, keep the back of your contact card clutter free. When redesigning my contact cards, I admit I have something at the very bottom of it. Yet, I insisted that I had plenty of room left to write notes on the back. Nothing seems worse than meeting someone and forgetting where you met them or why you wanted to stay in touch. Make sure you write a reminder to yourself.

copyright 2009 Kathy Condon

An award-winning published author and certified Executive Performance Coach, Kathy Condon travels the world inspiring others as an international speaker and trainer. She is driven by a distinct purpose to motivate others to achieve their full potential. Start each week on a positive note and sign up for Kathy's "Weekly Wisdom" - her popular Ezine offering insights and thought provoking comments about current events, business communication and career issues at http://www.kathycondon.info

kathy@kathycondon.info

(360) 695-4313

The Parlor House Daughter by Joanne Sundell

Nevada City in the 1880's was fast, rough and dangerous, particularly if you were a prostitute. Class of prostitute figured greatly into the comfort, treatment and survival potential of a working girl. You either worked in an upscale bordello or you were relegated to the end of the line working out of a crib. Our Odd Rods Rebecca Rose isn't from the upscale part of the line - she spent her first four years playing with her doll on the other side of a curtain from where her mother earned their living on her back. Rebecca is content in her mother's love 1957 Topps baseball cards of what goes on when the curtain is closed, until the day a nasty client with a knife ends Rebecca's Garbage Pail Kids Sworn to avenge her mother's murder she lives each day knowing she'll Watchmen peace once the murderer is lying cold beneath the ground.

When Rebecca finds work in Denver she knows she's entering the life handed down to her by her mother. What she doesn't expect is to find is love with one of the town's most prominent citizens. Morgan Larkspur, has always done what is right, in fact he's ahead of his times. He's caring, considerate, hard working and looks out for people. What Rebecca and Morgan find together is altogether unexpected and unconventional. Their desire for each other is at odds with their own personal quests, her desire for revenge and his desire for conventional happiness.

Ms. Sundell writes an interesting combination of western, historical, romantic mystery. The author has a unique writing style that is sharp and to the point. The dialogue is punchy, not flowery but it works here. It read in a staccato fashion, very much the way I imagine the frontier was, short and to the point with no superfluous meanderings. The author's sense of pacing had me guessing as to who the murderer was, and threw me off very early on in the book - I was surprised to learn his identity, and I certainly didn't see it coming.

As a reader, what I would have liked was several more chapters. The conflict between the hero and heroine wraps almost before it's begun. The resolution of problems up and disappear in a matter of paragraphs. Secondary characters that were well thought out and developed are nearly forgotten at the end of the book. This is a western and I wanted it to be big and sprawling, I felt the length of the book gave it confines it was never meant to have.

Maria Lokken
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