Get More Tips Tomorrow Guaranteed

It will be a three or four hour class and will be live and interactive.  The target market will be people in tip producing jobs.  Wait staff, bell men and valets for instance.   The price would have to be in the $60 to $80 range.  But lots of people would take the class and the results could be very good.  it turns out that there has been lots of research about tipping but the results are not getting filtered down to the people who can use it.  The service providers.  This class will give them practical information about how to get more tips.

The idea for the class came to me at dinner the other night.  Nurit, Lillian and I were discussing an excellent  paper Lillian wrote for her Hospitality Management Degree about the effect of gender on tipping.  It is a really interesting topic that is hard to study and quantify.  Tipping seems to be mostly cultural and has very little effect on service.  Did you know that if the server touches you in the correct way you are likely to give them a larger tip?  What do you think happens if the server discusses the prices on the menu with you?

Toms of Maine Toothpaste may have these characteristics but it has not been marketed to this perceived need.

To read more visit this site:

http://www.hooverdambypass.org/whats_new.htm

There is an opportunity for a book: A Hundred Bridges to See Before You Die It could be put out by the ASCE who publish a bridge calendar every year.

The good news is that now Cadbury has better distribution in the US.  The bad news is that the two companies are homogenizing.

This does not bode well for either companies distinct product lines.  It is an opportunity for the next Godiva Chocolate.

Alex is one of ten children and he and his wife have seven of their own.  Between his brothers and sisters they have 35 or 40 cousins.  Even if everybody is filled with goodwill all of these interactions cause some interesting dynamics.  Alex called the study of the relationships in his family “Gullo Dynamics” and he claimed to be the worlds expert.  There are dynamics in our small family and in our circle of friends and although we haven’t given them a name yet we have enjoyed thinking about the “Gullo Dynamics” of the various groups.   It is helping me be a bit more objective.

At Ankor Wat in Cambodia many years ago we had a guide named Tim who had a very calming walk.  In our family “Walking like Tim” is a code for calming down.  Gullo Dynamics has the same potential.    It can be code for “be objective”.  Another example came from Captain Wiley, a terrific Colorado River guide, we had in the Grand Canyon about five years ago.  Wiley used the expression “have a drink of water” as code for don’t get to testy.  And now we do too.

See all of my posts about Italy 2010

The good news is that the amount of trash on the streets has decreased dramatically.  The bad news is people have to take their trash to these bins which are on street corners everywhere.  Some of them have great views.

There is an opportunity for a Calendar in the vein of the “Round-a-Bouts of Derby” or the “Mobile Homes of New Mexico”

The presence of trash bins in such beautiful surrounding creates paradoxical photo opportunities.

More photos of beautiful bins

The building across from our hotel in Santa Margherita

The decorations on this building are not real.  They are painted on using a technique that make them look real.  The technique goes by the French name “Trompe L’Oiel” which means roughly to fool the eye.  It is pronounced: “trum ploy”.

A close-up illustrates the point

How and why it became fashionable to use it along the north west coast of Italy could be the subject of a doctoral thesis.  What we discovered was that it is done by homeowners and landlords to increase the eye appeal of their building.  There are no tax or direct economic subsidies to the owners.  It is roughly the same as people in Pasadena spending a lot of money to do really nice landscaping in their front yards.  It works by something like peer pressure for adults.

note the shadows of the real shutters above

In many cases the original building was roughly hewn stone from the late middle ages.  They were stuccoed later as fashion changed and economics allowed.  Beginning in the mid nineteenth century with the arrival of the railroads and tourists the fashion of decorating a building with trompe l’oiel started. Probably so the buildings wouldn’t look like they were in poor fishing villages.

I like the fact that a community of people works through non government, non coercive means to achieve a common good.  Sometimes it has gotten a little out of hand.

Even the cat is painted

I wonder if a painter skilled at this type of painting could build a business in the Los Angeles area?

More Trompe L’Oeil Pictures

More Italy trip Posts

There is an opportunity in this dichotomy.  Organize tours that are like wine tours but are focused on fresh food.

• Georgia in Peach season
• Illinois in Corn season
• Southern California in Strawberry season
• Maui in Mango season
• Cherries
• Plums
• Olives

Perfect foods are hard to find.  People with disposable income will pay to find them.

I wrote about it at the time on the blog.  In December I made a calendar for the family using Shutterfly.  So I was thinking about calendars when we went to New Mexico and had the idea for The Mobile Homes of New Mexico” calendar. It was not that well received so now I have a list of ideas for quirky calendars:

• Trailer Parks of Southern California
• Strip malls of Las Vegas
• Trash Cans of America (get a picture of a galvanized trash can before they are all gone)
• Hospital waiting rooms of the world
• Dead house plants
• Abandoned Subdivisions of Arizona

What I’m trying to illustrate here is how by having an open mind ideas can combine,  recombine and morph into new idea and if you let the process go on long enough one of the ideas will turn out to be a good one.  One of the important things is to be testing the ideas with others, getting their feedback, adjusting and then retesting.

This is a roundabout near my brothers home.  Here are some samples of my new ideas:

January (Trash Cans of America)

February (Trailer Parks of Southern California)