What do you do with old business cards once you’re no longer working for the company? It’s simple. Take a pen, scissors or marker and cross out what no longer applies. Then simply rewrite the card to reflect what you most want in your life.

Cards of Change is what would happen if Post Secret and Operation Beautiful had a three-way with Linked In. This website allows you to upload your new and improved business card in order to connect with others who have been laid off as well as potential employers.

Our mission is to collect as many business cards and stories of positive change of people who have recently been laid off and connect them with new opportunities from potential employers, business partners and people who make the effort to look on the bright side of life

The current beta form of the website includes a place to upload your revamped card to a searchable database which can be parsed by location. Unfortunately, it seems this search function isn’t entirely in working order yet. All searches I tried yielded no results. Hopefully, this will be functional soon.

In the meantime, I suggest checking out the Top 100 Cards list.

There you’ll find a former Chiat Day employee who now volunteers reading to children. Or Tiffanni who is making the time to doodle. And over and over, the message resonates from people who are living more freely, richly, openly and lovingly even though they’re not making as much money as they did before losing their jobs.

COMMUNITY CONNECTION

For information on finding work through travel, volunteering and making social media connections and more, check out Matador’s Focus pages.
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Career Advice

 

About The Author

Leigh Shulman

Leigh Shulman is a writer, photographer and mom living in Salta, Argentina. There, she runs Cloudhead Art, an art & education group that creates collaborative art using social media to connect people and resources. You can read about her travels on her blog The Future Is Red

  • http://www.kaleidoscopicwandering.com JoAnna

    Brilliant idea! Being let go is a lot easier to deal with if you reframe it as something positive and self-liberating. Wish I’d thought about doing this both times I was laid off. My ideas for the business cards were always much more creative than the Times New Roman font and corporate logo on them anyway.

    • http://www.thefutureisred.typepad.com/ Leigh Shulman

      It is a great idea. Anything that gets people seeing the world or an event in a different way is useful. I particularly liked the cards that didn’t have any identifying information. They are just art. Yes, in some ways defeating the purpose of the website, but in others, completely taking a business card and turning it on its head.

  • http://collazoprojects.com Julie

    Cards of Change is what would happen if Post Secret and Operation Beautiful had a three-way with Linked In.

    Love it!

  • http://www.twitter.com/erica_in_nyc Erica

    I love this idea. I am going to contribute my card; this makes me glad I didn’t throw them all away!

    • http://thefutureisred.com Leigh Shulman

      Hey Erica,

      Well definitely let us know if you do. I’d love to see it!

 

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