But after I did it, I wished I had done it in my first year of business. I wondered how many potential clients liked me, but wondered about my talent when they saw my old card. I wondered how many cards I could have had in circulation over that time, pre-selling my talent and services for me.
And I wondered if I could have prevented my 2002 business slump if I had paid more attention to appearances when I started out in 2000. My answer to that today would be yes.
Today, you might not ever do any business in person, and you might not even have a business card. But you have a website, a blog, or a profile somewhere like Elance or Freelance Nation. You have more opportunities to get a “Wow” from a potential customer than ever before. But are you still on BlogSpot? Is your headshot taken in a bar? Did you throw together a profile on a freelance marketplace site and say to yourself, “I’ll get back to it when I have more time”?
You might not probably will never know what business you have lost if you can say yes to any of the above. And maybe you haven’t ‘lost’ any business at all. But I can tell you that if you had a website, portfolio, blog, or profile that made people say “Wow” in the first 2 seconds, then you will get more business.
You don’t need to be a selling yourself as a designer for this to apply to you - people want to hire professionals who will make them or their company/product look great. If you can’t do that for yourself, how do you expect them to know you can do it for them?
Got your own $1000 business card, or other big investment that has paid for itself over and over again? I’d love to hear about it!
Photo Courtesy of eMomsatHome
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