Cards

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By DANIEL TAUB

Staff Reporter

When Michael Selsman meets a new business contact at a conference or party, he doesn’t just reach into his billfold and hand out a business card.

Instead, he first decides which of his five business cards he should give away.

Should he produce a Gateway Financial LLC card? A Blaine Group Inc. card? Maybe the Rocket Films card? Or how about the Sardis International plc card? Or what about the card identifying him as a counselor and administrator with the Los Angeles Counseling Center?

No, Selsman isn’t a private detective choosing an assumed identity. All of the business cards have his own name on them, and all are for companies for which he actively works.

Increasingly, business people in Los Angeles are not just carrying around a single business card. Rather they are carrying around multiple cards anywhere from two or three, to as many as 20 or more and handing out the one most appropriate to the situation at hand.

“If it’s a woman I’m trying to impress, I’ll probably tell her about the domestic violence counseling,” Selsman said. “If it’s about the entertainment business, I’m obviously talking about Sardis or Rocket Films. If it’s financial, it’s Gateway or Blaine Group.”

Like Selsman, Michael Swan has five business cards including two for a division of the Glendale company he co-owns with his brothers.

One Cygnet Stamping & Fabricating Inc. card reads “E. Michael Swan, Vice President,” while the other Cygnet card simply reads “Mike Swan.” One is for more-serious business situations, while the other is for dealing with companies with a more casual working environment, he said.

“Sometimes you want to be ‘Mike Swan, guy, from Cygnet Stamping & Fabricating,'” he said.

Rudolph Estrada, president and chief executive of South Pasadena-based Summit Group, has so many business cards he has lost count of them. He estimates that they now number about 25.

Because Summit Group manages the small-business lending divisions of about 20 different banks, including Home Savings of America, Imperial Bancorp and Bank of Hollywood, Estrada has a card with each bank’s name on it.

“On the occasions I’m going to meet a bank client, I carry a card for that bank,” he said. “The Summit Group then becomes transparent.”

But not so transparent that he doesn’t carry a Summit Group business card in his collection.

In addition, Estrada has a card from the California State University system, where he is a professor; a card from the White House Commission on Small Business, which he served on; and cards for two banks on whose boards he serves.

Estrada said he only carries the cards he needs on a given day, but visitors to his office lobby encounter a coffee table packed with some two dozen cardholders, each with business cards for one of his various identities.

“I think I might be unique in that respect having that many cards. I’ve never given it any thought at all,” he said.

While some people may carry multiple cards to boost their own egos, Hector Barreto says that for him it’s purely practical. He carries three cards one for Barreto Insurance and Financial Services, his core business; one for TELACU-Barreto Financial Services Inc., a partnership with The East Los Angeles Community Union; and one for the Latin Business Association, where he is chairman this year.

Barreto says he rarely hands a new acquaintance more than one card, instead choosing the card most appropriate to the situation. If the person is likely to need the services of Barreto Insurance, Barreto gives him that card. If he’s likely to be a securities client, Barreto gives him the TELACU-Barreto card. If Barreto is meeting someone at a Latin Business Association event, he gives that person one of his LBA cards.

“You may need to be able to demonstrate different areas of specialization,” he said. “You don’t want to be seen as a jack of all trades, master of none.”

The multiplication of business cards among L.A.’s professionals speaks to the nature of the local economy, as well as to how people here conduct business, said Jay Conger, a professor of management at USC’s Marshall School and author of the book “Winning ‘Em Over: A New Model for Management in the Age of Persuasion.”

Conger says there are three primary reasons why more L.A. professionals are carrying around multiple business cards.

First, companies are more likely than ever to form alliances with one another, such as the TELACU-Barreto partnership. Second, business people, particularly those in L.A., are more entrepreneurial than ever before. And third, people are becoming more aware of the power of personal branding and appealing to a particular market segment.

Conger said a business person working for an alliance even on a short-term assignment may get a business card for the life of the venture, in addition to his or her regular card.

“Alliances are more and more a way of doing business. There’s a lot more of that in the last decade than we’ve ever had before in America,” he said.

The entrepreneurial nature of Los Angeles also has fueled the multiplication of business cards, Conger said. A business person might work for one company full time a steady job to cover basic living expenses while simultaneously building a start-up company on the side.

That strategy ensures people are covered in the event they are laid off from their full-time jobs or their start-ups catch fire. “It’s almost like they’re placing their bets,” he said.

That is the case for Jovita Jenkins-Bnafa, who has three business cards including one from TRW, where she is a systems integration manager, and one from Ajides International Inc., a consulting business she runs with her husband.

“In the current environment, there’s not nearly the job stability there used to be, and you really have to be entrepreneurial to make sure you have your hands in enough pies to keep going,” Jenkins-Bnafa said.

But Conger said even a person who works for only one company a company not involved in any alliances might have several business cards, reflecting different specialties in which the person is involved.

“You are a brand, and your identity can be tailored,” he said. “Depending on what audience you are appealing to, you are shifting your brand slightly. You can brand yourself differently to the different audiences or different marketplaces you want to appeal to.”

Louise Elerding, immediate past president of the Association of Image Consultants International and owner of Burbank-based Professional Image Partners, said she advises her clients to give only one business card to a new acquaintance.

“I think a person is always appreciative of being focused on,” she said. “We’re in such an era of specialization, we like to know the person we’re working with is focused in our area. It might diminish the quality of the work if we see they’re not specialized and focused.”

Samuel Culbert, a professor of management at UCLA’s Anderson School and author of “Mind-Set Management: The Heart of Leadership,” said a person who hands out multiple cards may be trying to impress his or her new acquaintance, but a person who actually has an important or powerful position need only hand out one business card.

“I was at the Forbes CEO conference six months ago. Those guys only had to pull out one card: CEO,” he said. “They didn’t have to pull out multiple cards. People, by and large, were looking at them to be the leader of their company. When their role and their identity is really clear, they don’t need to hand out multiple cards.”

Indeed, few holders of multiple business cards say they hand out more than one or, at the most, two at a time.

But Selsman, of Gateway Financial, Blaine Group, Rocket Films and Sardis International, said he sometimes hands out multiple cards when someone asks him the standard cocktail party question, “What do you do for a living?”

Quipped Selsman: “I generally hold them out like a fan and I say, ‘Pick a card, any card, put it back in the deck, don’t show it.’ ”

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