Getting What You Want

"You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want."
— Zig Ziglar

My parents lived by the same principals espoused by Zig Ziglar, and they raised me to do the same. I wish I had been more attuned to their lessons when I was a teenager. I wouldn't have been the equivalent of an "American Idol," but I would have accomplished far more than I have career-wise.


Madaro, Crete

However, I have enjoyed an amazing life, primarily due to helping others get what they want. As a travel agent, a field with admittedly limited financial potential for a one-person operation, I do my best to help my clients get the most from their vacation time. As a father, I have successfully worked to help my children find their own paths. As a husband, I have supported my wife's career, holding down the home front so she could focus on her career goals.

My wife is arguably my best "customer." Whether getting her Baby Ruth bars and Johnny's pizza when aerobics burned off the calories in the 1980s, Reduced Fat Doritos and Wow potato chips during her low fat days of the 1990s, or sunflower seeds and Atkins bars for the low carb decade, I have tried to provide her what she wants.

Julie is an avid traveler with a bucket list full of check marks, and as ironic as this seems for a Cruise Planner, I really have little say in where we go on vacation. I just help Julie get there, and in doing so, I end up seeing some amazing places myself.

Most recently, the goal was a return to Crete so that we could visit the village of Madaro where Julie's grandfather Nick was raised before immigrating to America as a teenager about 100 years ago.



Nick wasn't deterred by 35 miles of winding roads between Madaro and the coastal town of Chania, most likely riding there in a bumpy horse-drawn cart, or by thousands of miles working and living in the belly of a ship without stabilizers to cross the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas and then the vast Atlantic Ocean. He reached his goal, America, and then migrated across the country until finding work in a coal mine in Rock Springs, Wyoming. As a result of the courage of his convictions and the sweat of his brow, his son was able to attend college and become an engineer, and that man was Julie's father John.

What's stopping you from getting what you want? I would love to help you get there. "Better service leads to better trips."