Is your firm mediocre? Or is it your cheap business cards?

I collect hundreds of business cards every year.

Under non-Covid conditions, I typically speak at dozens of conferences each year, attend a dozen more, and interview hundreds of lawyers in branding and website projects. So I have the occasion to pull handfuls of business cards out of my pockets all year.

Here’s a stack from one day at an ASIPI legal conference in Colombia:

There are a few things I notice immediately.

The first thing is the flimsy ones. The limp, thin, floppy ones that seem to wilt in your hand–the “cheap” ones. And it’s hard not to dismiss those cheap, flimsy, and insubstantial ones as coming from cheap lawyers who work at flimsy, insubstantial firms.

Now I’m as smart as the next guy; I know that there’s not necessarily a direct statistical connection between the pound-weight of a firm’s card stock and the IQ or skill level of their lawyers. But I also know that deep down, I still feel that there is.

Because a great firm, a successful firm, a powerful market leader wouldn’t have tried to save a penny a card on cheap paper. It’s why my Fishman Marketing cards are so thick you could use them to cut up an apple. I could fling it at a wall and it’d dig into the plaster. They make a strong, positive first impression. You can see people’s eyebrows raise when I hand them my card. “Wow,” you can hear them think.

Some people think business cards are becoming less important, replaced by touching phones, QR codes (mine’s below), or some other platform or technology.

Perhaps someday business cards will entirely disappear, replaced by technology. But that day’s not here, not yet. And probably not soon.