Several years ago when I telecommuted full time for Unifocus, I had an office in their Dallas offices and I’d go there maybe one week per month. I wanted it to feel like home when I was there – I hate naked offices – so I put in a couple of my chess sets, vacation souveniers, and a few framed photos.
Another employee said to me, “It’s so vain that you’ve got pictures of yourself in your office.” I was totally shocked – I’d never thought about it that way. I wanted my face in there because I didn’t want it to feel generic or impersonal. If somebody walked in when I wasn’t around, I wanted the office to feel like me.
Fast forward to 2008, and I’ve got business cards with my picture on ‘em. How vain is that, right?
I don’t know about you, but I’m horrendously bad with names. I mean, really bad. I do the tricks of repeating names back when I meet people, but with the number of people I meet, it’s more than my tiny brain can handle. Faces, on the other hand, I can remember. So I thought, why shouldn’t business cards include faces?
I got portraits done by the awesome Houston photographer Tracy Manford, and I ordered business cards from Moo that have my picture on the back. Now, when I hand ‘em out at the PASS summit next month, people won’t have to wonder which card went with the crazy guy that they never want to talk to again. They can look at my picture and know right away, “This is the card I wanted to throw out!”
Moo business cards aren’t cheap. The mini-cards cost $20 for 100 cards, and the full-size business cards are more than that. The results are spectacular, though, and definitely worth it: check out this Flickr group of Moo mini cards.
If you’re a DBA attending the PASS conference this year in Seattle, and you don’t want to fork out that much money for cards, head over to OfficeMax. They’re running a 50% off sale right now, so 500 full-color cards (although not two-sided) end up around $30-$50. That’s a cheap way to promote your blog or web site, especially when your official company card doesn’t have exactly the information you want to convey. Just get cards for this one event only and consider it a throwaway.
I’m really big on building a personal brand. I plan on being in this industry for the rest of my life, and I look at the portraits and the business cards as part of an investment in myself. If you want a better job in database administration, this is how you get it. When you meet people at PASS, they’re the kinds of people who will need to hire other DBAs. You’re going to meet people at huge companies, people starting up cool businesses, people who write books, people who write software, all kinds of cool folks who hire people like you to do cool jobs. If you want to make their short list, you have to make a good impression, and this is part of doing it.
If you want to do the picture-on-a-business-card thing, spend a little extra to have a really good photographer like Tracy Manford, because it’ll make all the difference. If you use family snapshots, vacation pictures, or K-Mart photo booth pictures, people will know it when you hand your business card over, and instead of looking cool, it’ll look cheap. That’s even worse than handing out a business card without photos!
You hit the nail on the head with building your personal brand. The cards look great and I like the fact the are abnormal in their size. Helps differentiate from the norm.
I’ve looked at getting Moo cards for my blog. How is the quality of the card stock of your cards?
You can pick from a few stocks, and I got the glossy one. The quality is great, very thick.
I got my MOO Cards! I got my MOO Cards! I got my MOO Cards! I got my MOO Cards! I got my MOO Cards!
and the Rahk!
You gotta take a picture and post it! Don’t they feel cool? Did you get one of the holders? I got the little black plastic one that goes on a keychain.
Don’t use MOO!! Bad quality paper stock, bad customer service, and too many mistakes. Ahhh – if only someone had told me!!! Read the other reviews on Moo before buying anything from them
Gosh, I’m sorry you had a bad experience! I had a great one, and I really like my cards. Several of my friends who’ve seen my cards have subsequently turned around and ordered cards from Moo too, and they’ve glowed about it. Every company does have a few misses though – nobody can be perfect all the time.
Is there another company you’d recommend over Moo that has a similar product – full color, both sides, with as many images as you want rotated through the cards?
I had a terrible experience with MOO. After much design time in photoshop, I had ordered a big stack of cards way ahead of the time I needed to send them out. The first sign of trouble was Moo’s software glitch that wiped out the whole text of the card – the whole point of the card was a marriage announcement in time for Christmas so without the text, the cards were useless. I caught that only because I went to double-check on the progress of it. After many e-mails back and forth where they swore they had fixed the bug, they told me the cards were good to go. When I finally got the , however – after this huge delay – they were wrong! The whole stack was worthless. I was forced to go to a local printer for (an expensive) rush order and the cards were late so the announcement lost its punch (the whole point of the cards). Moo barely refunded my money (they first didn’t believe me & had me take photographs of the cards they sent me! unbelievable!). Then they offered some terrible little discount as an “apology”. Like I would ever use them again! That, and I had paid for express shipping, but the cards took so long to get to me due to all their errors, all my money was down the drain. Not to mention, the card stock is an illusion – heavy plasticized paper so it looks like thicker card stock – it is unattractive on cards, difficult to write on and has bad transfer of colours. …
The local outfit did a good job, but because it was a rush order around x-mas, I ended up spending lots of $$ and had to take a day off work to drive around town picking up the cards and get them into the hands of those who needed to sign them. IN total moo cost me so much money, but mainly it was a hugely frustrating, stressful and incredibly grating experience. As for other companies to use, go local. Even though perhaps more expensive, you really do get what you pay for.
Zazzle cards are also pretty good – I’ve used them before and their paper stock is phenomenal – very nice.
I know every company has glitches, but the way moo handled this (I ended up going to the top of the food chain with the issues I encountered) convinced me that this is a money-grabbing, unprofessional company that I do not want to support.