Where the Hell is that Number?
I don’t know about you guys, but I have two books filled with business cards. Whenever I meet somebody interesting and they give me their business card, I just stick it in my card book that I purchased from Staples.
Of course we all have email addresses and it’s as simple as just saving the person’s contact information in our gmail or outlook accounts, but I also like to keep physical copies of my contacts and people that I network with.
Entrepreneurs really need to take getting other peoples’ contact information very seriously. It’s so easy to just take down someone’s number on a random piece of paper or a napkin and just forget about it after a few days; I used to do that all the time.
But if you really discipline yourself to always file your information carefully, then before you know it you’ll have tons of contacts to network with whenever you want. Even if you feel that someone can’t directly help your business you should still take their contact information. You never know who they know and potential business partnerships can be created indirectly through them.
I once met this random student at a bar and he said that he knew a person in Arizona who was into a similar business such as mine; he asked if he could give that person my contact information. I agreed and months went by without ever hearing of this mysterious business contact. Finally I got a call one day from the business contact in Arizona and we ended up helping each other make some money by working on a few projects together.
See, you never know. So it’s one thing to always make sure you get peoples’ contact information, but also give them yours – you have nothing to lose and only the world to gain.
I have about three different sources for storing contact information: my Blackberry, business card book, and my gmail account. But at the end of the day, I am always glad to begin flipping through my business cards before searching anywhere else (but that’s just me). I’m also starting to grow on my Blackberry, so who knows, maybe I’ll start relying more on that for storing contacts.
We all have our own ways for storing information, but just make sure that it’s organized and easy to locate – you never know when you’ll need the help of someone you met or when someone may have a business proposition for you, so do yourself a favor and don’t lose that contact information.
What’s your way for storing contact information?
I had the same issue about 6 months ago. So one weekend I decided to sit down and program my own personal online address book. I have some very simple tagging features which really help. I always tag a contact with their metro location, industry, and companies they work for. That way when ever I travel somewhere I can always easily look up who I coud set up some lunches with.
Plus hosting it on one of my already existing servers allows me to look someone up wherever I go.
I also use to use an excel sheet. Worked pretty well for awhile.