Episode Transcription

33: Business Cards Are Not Dead

Hello, lovely lady. Welcome to Classroom to Business. The podcast designed specifically for teachers working to become successful businesswomen and creating financial freedom and lifestyle flexibility. I'm Kirsty Gibbs, business coach and mentor for educators and teachers just like you who are ready to step away from the classroom and create something more. 

The Classroom to Business podcast is committed to helping you grow your business, break down those barriers to success and replace your teaching salary without having to work more hours. It's time for you to find freedom and start being your own boss so you can once again enjoy what you do and wake up each morning loving life.

Let's get into it. 

Something that is old school that I really love, however, are business cards. Nobody does business cards anymore. They're kind of just became extinct or something. And I think it's because we have our mobile phones. We don't need a little card with somebody's phone number because we can just put it into our phone straight away, or we can go straight to their website on our phone.

Or we can follow them on Facebook and we've got them there forever if we need to search them. The thing is, I think, especially in our industry, that business cards can be super powerful. I want to share a little story with you. Just recently, I paid for my car to get cleaned. Yes, I know if my mom is listening, she will be probably mortified because she thinks that's something that you can do yourself, Kirstie.

Yes, it is. It is something that I can do myself. However, I have children, they are messy. I live near the beach. It is sandy and it doesn't matter how good the vacuum cleaner is at the do it yourself places, I can never get my car as clean as I want it. So on and off for the last few years, I have had different people actually come to my house and clean my car.

And yes, that sounds really extravagant. But, it was actually really affordable, I felt, for what I was getting. Anyway, that's off on a tangent. The first people I had were great, did a good job, but they moved and, you know, were no longer doing it. Then the next guy I found, he was In between working at the mines, so he came and cleaned my car a couple of times, then went back to the mines and I lost him.

I was looking for ages then for somebody to clean my car. And what I'd found was the people that I'd had previously had prices that I thought was affordable. The prices that I was finding with the bigger companies was nearly double that. And I couldn't justify paying that much money just to clean my car.

And again, everybody's values are different here and your priorities are different, but that's where I was sitting. So I spent a lot of time in a car that was dirty because I was being lazy, let's be honest, I didn't clean out the sand. Yes, I would, you know, clean out the car and get rid of what I could. 

But finally, I found a guy who was in the price range that I was willing to pay, got him to come round. He was Amazing. He was so good. He was the most thorough out of anybody I'd had. He was a little slow, but that's okay. He was very, very thorough. And you know what he did at the very end of him finishing, which nobody else had ever done. 

And I don't even know the last time that somebody did this in general, he gave me a business card. Now I've just got to pause and go back and fill in some information here that I missed. The first two people that I had. Two companies come out to clean my car. I couldn't remember who they were, what their names were.

I struggled to find them again in my phone in terms of like, what was their website? What was their phone number? And sure, maybe I could have just saved them in my car as cleaning guy or something like that, but they were messages backwards and forwards through Facebook messenger and website where I lodged my thing.

And then it was email. I don't know. It was just not easy to find. This guy, I wish I knew his name right now so that I could share his business with you, but I don't. Him giving me his business card, that was so exciting. Because I put that in the top drawer in our kitchen, where all the really safe stuff needs to go.

Everyone has a section of their drawer that's got that, maybe it's your bottom drawer in your kitchen. And now, the next time I need to clean my car, I will be going back to him, obviously, because he did a good job, but because I know how to contact him and I know how to contact him really quickly and easily. 

And my whole, I guess, point here is that he made it easy for me to go to him again. He made it so easy for me to get back in contact with him. I couldn't forget him. I mean, I've forgotten his name, but I can go downstairs right now and find it. Whereas the other companies before was a real struggle to remember.

Where was I messaging them? Actually, one of them was on Instagram because it was through a friend of a friend, another one was on Facebook messenger. I couldn't remember their business names. I couldn't remember their names. This guy had made it so easy business cards. I do believe. Do have a part to play in business and I think because so many people are now relying on phones and online stuff.

That having that tactile, tangible, offline thing that you can take with you, put in your pocket, put in your wallet, put in your kitchen drawer, put in your office drawer, wherever it is that you put your things like this, and let's face it, we don't have as many of these anymore, so they're less likely to get lost, maybe it's on the fridge, they are going to stand out a lot more, so, when you are talking to somebody, yeah, Yeah.

Whether it's a friend that you haven't seen in a long time, it's a colleague, an ex colleague, family member, somebody that you've just met, and you start talking about your business because if you follow me, you know that this is one thing I say, tell these people what you do. And they get excited because they actually need a tutor for their child.

And this happens a lot when we talk to people, we discover that their children actually need help. You have got a business card in your wallet or your car that you can give them. Now, one of my other things that I always say is don't just rely on that. Make sure you always get their phone number. There are so many benefits and maybe I should do a podcast episode on this, but there are so many benefits of you taking the number to call them back.

Today, I'm just going to say, make sure you do that. That's rule number one. If you're in a conversation and somebody is talking to you about their child and they're showing interest of what you offer, even if you've just met them, or like I said, maybe they're a long lost friend or relative, whoever they are, take their number and make it your job, your responsibility to get back in contact with them, but also. 

Give them your card right now. You've got an opportunity to get in front of them a little more. So your card will have your logo on it. It will have your name. It'll have your business name. It will have your email address. It might have your phone number. If you want to be contacted by phone, you decide what's the best way of contacting you, but it's something that they can take with them to find out more about you and the services that you offer.

So when you do call them. In a few days time, they might've already learned a bit more about you, or they now know how to, after they get off that phone call with you quick one today, because I wanted to share with you that personally, I don't think business cards are dead. I think they were like near extinction.

A lot of people stopped using them, but I think we can bring them back and we can bring them back effectively. So if you want to be at the front of the mind of the people that you meet and you talk to, Whatever those situations are, then I do encourage you to look into some business cards and make them catchy, make them stand out.

Make sure your branding is really, really prominent. Make them look really professional and you can do all sorts of cool things with business cards these days. I mean, you can have them slightly raised. You can have them gloss. You can have them matte. You can have the actual card thicker. You can have all sorts of fancy things.

It's up to you whether you want to do that or not. I think back in the day that was a really effective way of standing out when everybody had business cards. But I think now as long as you make the card have really clear branding, really easy and clear and simple to read, and great Ways for them to get in touch with you.

And obviously super professional looking like you don't want it to look like love my nine year old, but I don't want my business card to look like she designed it. As long as you're taking those boxes, then I think that's enough because you're not competing. with hundreds of other business cards anymore. 

Let me know if you have business cards already for your tutoring business. And if you do, where do you use them? Do you have them just sat around different places? Have you shared them with people? Are they just all in your wallet or your car and you've never actually thought of using them? Let me know.

Send me a DM, send me an email. Let me know if you use business cards in your business. And how you use them. And if you don't, I highly encourage you to go and do a little bit of research. How much will it cost you to get business cards, design your logo on them, your branding, printed, don't go crazy. Don't need thousands of them right now. 

And start handing them out to the people that you speak to and have conversations with. And then let me know how you go with that. Good luck. People often, when they start their tutoring businesses, They want to create flyers and print them and do flyer drops. And one of the first things that I say to them is, if you own a tutoring business, do not do a flyer drop to random suburbs around the place.

And no matter how many times I say it, still people will do it and it's often not effective. Now there are a few reasons for this. The first is it actually costs a lot of money to create your flyers. Get your flyers printed and then distribute them. Your return on that investment is very low. And the reason for that is because you are putting your flyers out into an area, even if it's a suburb near a primary school or near a high school, whatever your clientele is. 

You are still wasting some of those flyers into people's homes who don't have kids or I'm not interested. Maybe they've got kids, but they don't need it, or they've got kids and they're older or they're younger or who knows. It's not super effective marketing or return on investment for this particular type of marketing because.

You are paying money to get in front of people who aren't your audience, as opposed to something like Facebook ads. This episode is not about Facebook ads, but I just want to compare it. Facebook ads, obviously you are paying to get in front of a particular audience that is more likely to be your audience. 

What I wanted to talk to you about today though, is something that is a little old school and I say old school because flyers kind of falls into the old school category. Okay. And I think that is why automatically a lot of us come into business and think I'll print flyers and drop them off because that's really .

The only, well, maybe not the only, but what our brains revert back to as marketing, because that's what we've seen. And especially if you're my age ish, you would have had brochures and flyers come to your letterbox when you're growing up and maybe as an adult. Now a lot of people have no junk mail on their letterboxes.

People just don't want that stuff coming to their houses. But in line with that old school marketing is another form of marketing, which I actually love. And it is the little old business card business cards. Kind of just disappeared as well and I think mobile phones took over a lot of that because you can just give somebody your phone number, you can just look up a website, you can just follow them on Facebook, so there was less of a reason for us to go and design and print and distribute business cards because we could do that really easily on our phones, however, blah, blah, blah. 

It's got to a point now where nobody is really using business cards. When you use business cards, you do stand out. And even though I just touched on the flyers, I am going to be interested to see what happens over the next few years. Not that it will come back to bite me on the backside. Because I do think still that flyer drops in your local area for the price that you pay, the return on investment isn't very high, but because nobody is really doing that anymore, that could be something effective.

What I would say though, is instead of doing flyer drops. If you enjoyed this episode today, I would absolutely love for you to leave a review. It only takes a minute. And if you haven't yet subscribed, make sure you do to ensure that you never miss an episode. Finally, if you want to know more about what we do, head over to the website, kirstygibbs.com or check out the link in the show notes below. Thanks for listening. It's so great to have you here.