For nearly 40 years my career was focused around accounting, from high school through college it was always accounting. The reason for this is was because it came very easy for me and it seemed like you should pursue things that come easy. I graduated from a very good business school at Seattle Pacific University and started my first job in the accounting world. It didn’t take me long to climb the “corporate ladder” and plateau at the Controller level. My last several jobs were various different Controller jobs all in different types of industries. It was never a very fun or sexy job but it paid the bills and raised my two daughters. Now that I am in my 50’s I think it is my time to do something that I really love.
I researched many different industries around things I like to do. I came very close to opening a Great Harvest Bread franchise but realized that I would just be buying myself a job. A job that would require me to get up extremely early and work long hours and have to deal with employees. This would take all the fun out of my love for baking so I went back researching and decided my favorite thing to do was travel by cruise ship. Now not knowing anything about the industry other that I loved to travel, I started searching for business opportunities. I first started looking at opening a traditional store front travel agency but soon found out that it meant I would have to hire and manage people and be tied to somewhat regular store hours. This was something I did not want to do. I wanted the freedom to run my business from anywhere with no employees. This lead me to researching travel agency franchises that would allow me to run my business from home or a cruise ship. There were several out there but I narrowed it down to Cruise Planners based on their great reputation they had in the travel industry and from their current franchisees. Cruise Planners also has an award winning training program that they dubbed a business in a box. Everything you need to start and run your business was included and they even set you up with a personal coach. After much deliberating with my wife and encouragement from my friends we decided to take the plunge and purchase the travel agency. That was in November of 2016 with our one week in person training to begin in January.
I believe that life has a way of working out for the best if you are faithful and listen to your inner voice. The reason I say this is because the week before our training was to begin we already had a cruise booked on the newest ship in the Carnival line up, the Vista. I had to have made the right decision now, I purchased a business in an industry I love and the training for this business just happens to coincide with a cruise we already had booked. I don’t know if I believe in Karma but this had to be a good sign.
CP Vacay Dreams 