I never quite understood the deal behind business cards. Lately, it feels more like I'm just signing myself up for something by coughing up a card. The emails always show up the Monday after the big conferences: "Great meeting you at #HashtagConferenceYear."

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know you found me in a fishbowl. It's really ok to call a spade a spade. Let's get real here. If you have a name and an email address, you can find pretty much any other information you want to see.

The internet is creepy like that.

So why take a standard approach when you could create a really memorable business card?

This is the predicament I found myself in as I launched Three Ears Media.

You must have business cards. Well, in my world most people have business cards. So there I am. I need to have business cards too. First big event. Here's the catch.

No one has a memorable business card.

In fact, most of the business cards I've seen are pretty damn forgettable.

It doesn't help that I'm just not a template kind of person and I'm frugal (read: cheap).

So, as I was hunting for business cards, I was coming up empty-handed. If I'm spending $50 - $100 on something, I want it to be good.

So instead of searching best-in-class templates, I asked my interns: what do you think should be on a business card?

Lesson learned: Sometimes asking people who don't know the "rules" is the best place to start if you want to stand out.

They came up with my concept.

Here's the idea. A business card should prompt a conversation. It should be something that makes a person say, "oh they were great. Let's call them." While your contact details are oh-so-compelling, try putting something you love to talk about on your card. It could be a photo or quote; find something that prompts a question and a conversation.

In my case, it's a picture of my dogs. I mean, duh.

Let me tell you, my business cards start more conversations than I can recount. People tell me stories about their dogs, friends, family - whatever Ruby's little tongue and Lyric's big ear inspire. I think deep down, it also makes people feel a bit more comfortable. In a world where we're hit with 3000 messages a day, people want to remember you, not feel marketed to.

So next time you order those business cards, go for memorable over marketable.