By BIG Mike McDaniel, the Small Business Advertising Expert

In the Northwest Airlines Terminal building at the Detroit Metropolitan Airport, a clever worker has patched the terrazzo floor. Since I am not there every day (although it seems like it the traveling I do), I don't know the reason for the patch. But nonetheless, it is a patch. You can see it 12 gates away.

The workmanship is fine and perhaps in time it will age and blend with the floor around it some. A patch was probably the right choice, given the hundreds of thousands of square feet of floor to replace to make it all the same. So I give 'em that. Too expensive to replace the whole floor, so patch it and make it a really good patch.

But I can't abide by the tightwad that spends an hour carefully marking out the email address on a stack of business cards and painstakingly pencilling in the new address. Yuk!

What's it gonna cost to buy a new box of cards? Not much, but even if it was really expensive, I venture to predict the negative impression of the "mark-out, pencil-in" change will cost more than a new box of cards in future business.

Would you opt for any medical anything in a hospital that used duck tape to hold on a broken door handle? Of course not. The fix on the cheap route doesn't work for people in business, especially if they need to make a favorable impression. Business cards are like that. They can make, or break, the impression you and your business make.

If one itty bitty snippet of information on your card changes, the cards are obsolete and should be pitched and new ones printed, pronto. There is no excuse for keeping old cards around. I read a chapter in a book someone had written that listed 29 things to do with outdated business cards. One of them was to glue them together and give them to Gramma so she could prop up the kitchen table and get her New Testament back.

A crisp, clean, professional looking business card printed on white glossy stock, with no errors or changes is the best foot you can put forward in your business.

To learn more about how to make your business card the most powerful tool in your marketing arsenal, visit https://tinyurl.com/j6ol3

�2006 BIG Mike McDaniel, Small Business Advertising Expert, all rights reserved. BIG Mike is a Business Consultant and Professional Speaker. His BIG Ideas Group helps business grow with promotions, special reports, mastermind groups, seminars and consulting. Subscribe to "BIG Ideas for Small Business" Newsletter https://BigIdeasGroup.com

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