It was Friday morning and Nate could barely drag himself into the office. He had forgotten what a 
mess he'd left his desktop in when he'd hurriedly rushed out last Friday. No matter how many times he did this particular trade show, the long schedule dragged him down.
Sure, it was great for making some much-needed contacts, but as he thought about all the loose ends he'd left at the end of last week, he sighed audibly. It was going to be a long day.
As Nate dumped his computer bag onto his desk of scattered papers, he remembered Friday's little crisis that unfolded as he was trying to get out the door. He needed to get ahold of the group that had designed last year's annual report and see if they could take over the product launch brochures that had gotten behind schedule. If only he could find their phone number. Of course, it would help if he could remember the design team's name. A scan of his cell phone directory came up dry.
Nate shuffled the papers on his desk, hoping for a miracle but knowing there was no clue to be found among the scattered pages. He paused, then reached into the tote bag he had snagged at the Atlanta show and fished around in the bottom. There it was, a notepad block. Just what he needed to start getting himself organized. He pulled the notepad from the bag, and jotted a few words to his boss before before sticking the note atop a letter to drop off later.
Setting it aside, he unzipped his laptop from the bag and fired it up. He still needed to track down that design team. But it would take hours to sift through search results for a company in a city of nearly 1 million people without remembering anything about the its name or street address.
Then, like a light bulb going on over a cartoon character's head, Nate had a revelation. He had visited the booth of a digital design team while at the Atlanta show. Nate snapped his laptop shut and turned back to the customized notepad block. There on the top of each little note paper was the name of the company and its contact information, like precious treasure waiting to be discovered.
Nate grabbed up his cell and quickly tapped in the company's digits emblazoned across the paper.
The voice was friendly on the other end as Nate explained how he had met a couple of the company's account executives at a trade show earlier in the week. "I've got an urgent project I need to discuss..." he started to explain.
By the time, Nate hung up the phone a few minutes later, he had jotted down several more notes to himself from the handy notepaper block. Now he stuck them to the front of the project folder and set it aside, confident the crisis had been averted. The prickly feeling of anxiety had evaporated. He slid the note paper block to the corner of his desk within easy reach.
Nate smiled to himself, thinking about all the technology he had at his fingertips, from his smart phone to his business card reader.
But it was this company's foresight to put a handy customized notepad block into his hands that won them his business. He pulled another single note from the top of the block and penned a quick reminder to himself to call a client and pressed it onto the customer's folder, then started straightening the rest of his desk, reaching now and then for a note paper. Friday wasn't going to be so bad after all.
