My bulletin board is full of sticky notes and business cards strategically placed as gentle reminders to follow through. I laughed the other day when my son asked me if this was my collection. I suppose I need to clarify a bit. My middle child is a collector. He collects stones, bugs, random things from outside (we had to limit them to not living things after the frog in the bed fiasco...poor frog), and of course anything shiny. I have given him more old cigar boxes to house his collections than I ever imagined humanly possible over the years. His room is more museum than bedroom and I sincerely could not imagine it any other way. His observation of my cork board made me think.
As business folks we do our fair share of collecting. We collect receipts, contacts, clients... our own little specimen boxes. The thought occurred to me- specimen boxes only contain stagnant....not moving.... things. Did I want my rolodex, those cards on my corkboard to be nothing more than a specimen? Networking and business isn't about collecting, it is about learning from and interacting with those names on the cards. It is about being active and engaging. I decided at that moment that my rolodex would be a living breathing collection not sitting there for posterity sake.
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