Holmes Family Blog

Hi Bloggers:

A cool, cloudy, windy morning in So. Fla. and I'm in my home office doing some work. Karen and I went out to dinner last night with Dulcie and three guests at Lago Mar, Ed, Keri and Tom. Dan and Mom have met them as they sponsored their day at Lago Mar last weekend. They treated us to dinner at a great Italian place called Anthony's Runway 84. It's an older place set up like you're in an airport/airplane, but the food was delicious. Veal on bone parm for me and shrimp pasta a la vodka for Karen. Sat down at 7:45 p.m. and got up at 11:15 p.m.!! Loonnng dinner.

Jackie and Devin were going to come down last night and go dress shopping in Wellington (about an hour from here) but the shooting tragedy at her college cancelled those plans. Jackie says she may make in down next week for spring break.

Karen's at her busiest period ever with Karen's Cleaning. She had 10 cleanings between Monday and Friday, and 9 already scheduled for next week, and there was a call on the machine last night from a new prospect. Our next mailing is going to be postcards to 500 or so, instead of letters on stationary at full postage to 250. Also, I need to print her up referral cards that offer a one time 50% off cleaning for any current customer who recommends a new client, and a one-time 50% off to that new client as well. Referrals is the name of the game in this biz. Apparently, women like to talk about their cleaning person with each other. True?

I worked on my photo book concept all day yesterday. I now have 3 different style books to offer hotels for their meeting groups.

1. Full-size 8 1/2 by 11 inch hardcover book with suede-like cover, foil imprinting, and custom dust jacket. The book has postcard perfect like pictures of the resort throughout the book, and pictures from a particular group's meeting or banquet intermixed on the same pages.

2. A soft-cover 6 by 8 inch book that features the group's logo and great resort photos on the front cover, meeting dates, etc.,
and page two features just one big shot of the entire group. The balance of the book has just the great stock photos of the resort. The fact that it's softcover with very little customization throughtout the book cuts the product cost about 66% versus the customized hardcover.

3. Same as #2, but only 3.5 by 3 inches in size. Cute and a nice handout cheaply to all attendees as a "thanks for coming."

If you hadn't heard, Lago Mar liked my #1 hardcover above, but "too expensive" for their clients, so they wanted to see some cheaper products with new pricing. The new books should be shipped to me by late next week. Once I have them with associated pricing, I plan to show the product to at least 10 other resorts and gauge reaction.

That's it from So. Fla. Off to work 3 pm today, and Karen and her mom off to her girlfriend Claudia's wedding.

-Mike