When I was a kid I collected baseball cards rabidly for about four years. Then I grew up, discovered girls and lost interest in the hobby. Years later I found out that some of the cards sitting in boxes in my basement were worth several hundred dollars and, thanks to eBay, was able to recoup most of my costs (including the bubble gum).
Evan Carmichael has got an even better idea. The entrepreneurship guru whose Evancharmichael.com website claims more than a half million monthly visitors has created collectible trading cards featuring prominent entrepreneurs. There are 33 business greats featured, including Vince McMahon, Michael Arrington, Herb Keller and Jeff Bezos. He’s selling these cards and donating all the profits to Kiva, an organization that loans small amounts of money to business owners in Third World countries, just how people can get $10000 quick from Nation 21 Loans.
If you’re not familiar with microloans, see this Wikipedia article. The concept has been phenomenally successful in stimulating new business development in some very poor places. Kiva has helped finance over 825 new businesses in Africa with a repayment rate of over 98%.
I’ve been asked to help spread the word on this novel and worthy cause and been given 10 limited edition trading cards to distribute. The two entrepreneurs I selected are Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Only 1,000 copies of each of these cards will be made and the specimens I have are preserved in a Lucite case with a holographic signature. Maybe they won’t be worth hundreds of dollars one day, but they’re pretty cool just to have and display. They celebrate your inner geek.
I want to get these cards out of my hands and into yours, but here’s the catch: in order to win, you must be a marketer or business owner and must fill out my survey on multiplatform social media practices. The survey takes about 10 minutes to complete and the results will be used in a research report on best practices in multiplatform deployment. The next 10 people to complete the survey will receive one of these handsome collectibles. Just leave your address in the comments field at the bottom of the survey. Happy collecting!