Join Allison Dudas from Franchise Business Review as she interviews Mark and Monica Soberman, franchisees of Cruise Planners. Discover their journey from starting a travel agency in 1988 to embracing the Cruise Planners franchise model. Learn about their passion for travel, the benefits of franchising, and how they leverage technology and community to succeed. Gain insights into their first year, the challenges they faced, and the strategies that led to their success. Perfect for aspiring entrepreneurs and travel enthusiasts!
The Cruise Planners Franchise Opportunity
We survey tens of thousands of franchisees every year. With that information, we make lists that honor the top-performing ones. Cruise Planners slays this and appears in the following lists just this year:
- Top Franchises for Culture
- Top Franchises for Women
- Top Low-Cost Franchises
- Top 200 Franchises
- Most Innovative Franchises
- Best Franchises for Veterans
Learn More About this Franchise Opportunity
Because Cruise Planners surveys their franchisees regularly with Franchise Business Review, we can give you all sorts of insight into the health and culture of their company. You can download their full franchisee satisfaction report on our site to learn so much more.
Transcript
Allison Dudas (00:03)
Hi, I’m Allison Dudas and I am from the marketing department here at Franchise Business Review. And one of the aspects of my job, one of the aspects I love the most is getting to talk to franchisees. So I get the chance to talk to franchisees to really explain and discover what the process is like of becoming a franchise, what it’s like owning a franchise, challenges, benefits, et cetera. And today I have the pleasure
of speaking with two franchisees from the Cruise Planners franchise. Now, Cruise Planners is a home-based travel franchise, and we always see them on our list. So just a reminder about Franchise Business Review, we are a market research company. We’re kind of like the consumer reports of franchising, and Cruise Planners, like many of the brands we work with, they send out surveys to their franchisees yearly to figure out how they’re doing, right? Are they satisfied owning their brands?
And cruise planners franchisees answer these questions so favorably. So you will see them on so many of our lists. And talking with me today are Mark and Monica Soberman. And they are franchisees from cruise planners that have owned their franchise for less than a year.
So you are going to hear from them a lot about what owning a franchise is like at the very beginning. So thank you so much for agreeing to talk to me today.
Mark Soberman (01:33)
Thank you. Yeah, we’re happy to be here. Absolutely.
Allison Dudas (01:35)
So
my first question is, when did you first invest in a cruise planners?
Mark Soberman (01:42)
Yeah, so we invested in the cruise planners February 2025. Yeah, February 2025 is when we made the decision. We were looking into other options in the travel cruise space. We, like a lot of people in our shoes, we were looking at host agencies first. And we did look at a couple of franchises as well outside of cruise planners.
So we did some research probably for a month or so before we ultimately settled upon cruise planners.
Allison Dudas (02:13)
Okay, so it’s really been about a year, so almost happy anniversary to you. Before you worked with cruise planners, what were you both doing?
Mark Soberman (02:17)
Thank you.
I guess I’ll start real quick.
I actually, odd story, but I actually opened a travel agency back, it’s gonna date myself quite a bit here, but in 1988. ⁓ Back then there was no online, there was nothing like this, there was no home officeing. I mean, we’re booking cruises from cruise ships, you couldn’t do any of that. So we opened, or I opened a retail travel agency and had that for a couple years. And at that time I really had never taken a cruise, I had never traveled internationally, just kinda had a bit of this bug for travel and this passion and I…
decided to go for it with another partner. So we opened that in Southern California. ⁓ So fast forward, we had that for a few years, ended up selling it. Then I got into technology businesses, online marketing, online businesses. I’ve really had my own business for about 30 years when I left the corporate space, ⁓ somewhere about 30 years ago, give or take. And then have had those businesses ever since. Outside of travel, not really related to travel at all, but we’ve always kind of…
together have had this passion for travel and this interest in it. And yeah, that’s kind of the quick background. And Monica? Yeah, so I don’t really come from a travel background, but I’ve in the past done things like I sold African safaris for a while working with an operator in Tanzania. And then I owned a charter brokerage for like Air Charter private jets for a few years and and book travel that way. But I’ve had a passion for travel since the 80s.
and it’s one thing we’ve always done together and we’ve kind of amped that up in the last few years.
Allison Dudas (04:03)
That’s great. So obviously love of travel and it’s very clear to me that both of you are entrepreneurs at your heart. So it makes sense to me that here you are owning your own business. why a franchise as opposed to kind of doing what you did in 1988 and open one on your own?
Mark Soberman (04:22)
Yeah, that’s a great question. ⁓ This time around, like our plan wasn’t initially even to go into this. A few years ago, we started to ⁓ travel remotely. So because we both had our own different home based businesses, again, nothing to do with travel at all. But we knew once our daughter was out of the house in college on her own, we had the ability to travel lot more. But we made the decision to travel full time. So we pretty much put everything in storage.
and got rid of the house. Our last dog passed on and we’re like, okay, we could probably do this full time. And we really did that for about…
three years, only in the last year have we altered that plan a little bit and we’re like a split right now. We’re six months traveling, a lot of cruises, and then six months at home here in Florida. So really the reasons for it was I kind of knew that in other businesses that I have done, some of my ⁓ biggest successes in recent years have been when I’ve already sort of bought into a business that was already up and running, already had systems, already had marketing, all these things that it
takes
to get going is really difficult if you start brand new on your own. So then it really just became a search for well, who’s got amazing training? Like I may have had a little bit more experience in the travel space than Monica. So I wanted to make sure that Monica had great training. But let’s be honest, the training that I had is decades old, right? I mean, everything has changed. Yeah. Yeah.
Allison Dudas (05:49)
So much has changed, even in the last five years, you know, just.
Mark Soberman (05:53)
Dramatic changes also for us big was technology. You know, we wanted to be with a company that was leading edge of technology ⁓ Again, our past businesses have always been tech heavy tech centered, you know I wanted them to actually be aware of this thing called artificial intelligence. I didn’t want to be telling them about it ⁓ So tech was really important to us training was really important to us having systems Was really important and we also wanted to work with a company that we were going to represent that has a reputation that does a lot of volume
that has some special relationships with the products that we’re marketing and selling. So we know confidently when we present to a client ⁓ that it’s not just us who put this together on a whim and a hobby, that we’re really backed up by this billion dollar a year business. So a lot of that is what ultimately probably led us to cruise planners. We looked at a lot of host agencies. They were always missing something. Maybe the technology wasn’t good or the training wasn’t good. There was always something that was missing. This was like the perfect combination of everything for us.
And I’ll say also running your own business, you do the thing you love and then you also have to do marketing. You have to do all the other stuff that goes with it, know, accounting and taxes and everything. So it’s really nice to have a lot of those functions done for you to kind of let you do the thing that you like to do.
Allison Dudas (07:12)
Monica, that is such a great point. used to own my own business and that was the hardest part for me. was like bookkeeping. Yes, yes, you have to wear all of the hats and I can see how buying into a franchise system depending on the system you really could easily have those things done for you. OK, so tell me about tell me about just that initial onboarding experience like walk me through. OK, you you.
Mark Soberman (07:18)
You gotta do it all and you have to pretty much do it all well.
Allison Dudas (07:42)
done all this research, you figured out that cruise planners is the right spot for both of you because of tech, because of all these other things that you spent time researching, you sign on the dotted line, then what happens?
Mark Soberman (07:57)
Yeah, so we or I, guess, threatened to do this maybe 10 years ago. And ⁓ I was getting a little burnt out with my other ⁓ full time business, which I still work on, by the way, which is one of the great things about a franchise like this. You can live your life. You can travel. You can have other interests and even another business like I do ⁓ and still do this, which is pretty amazing. But I actually looked at cruise planners at that time. So it was always kind of in the back of my mind. ⁓ So when we looked at it again and had seen what was still the same,
and what was different, it was actually a fairly easy decision overall. And really the onboarding was pretty amazing because one,
You know how sometimes if you sign up for an opportunity, all of sudden that’s the last you hear from people. It was the exact opposite with our cruise planners experience. We got assigned to a coach right away, an accountability person. Everything that they had promised in the beginning happened like from day one. And we’re, me maybe, super impatient. We just kind of wanted to kind of just get going. I just wanted to get going. We had already built up a bit of a community online of people that were interested in travel that we knew could be our clients. So we’re probably more of the impatient variety.
but everything was kind of there for us. The training was ready to go. I was just super impressed having been in online business for like 30 years, just how well laid out everything was. And this was all before we got to start a university where we got to go in person to training. And when you go to that, it is like a complete game changer because you cannot pick up on the level of commitment, the enthusiasm, the quality of the people, the people at home office until you go to that, which I didn’t really get it until I went.
We
recently had a new associate that we brought on and we sent her to it a couple of weeks ago. Same thing, we gave her good training in advance, but I’m like, until you go and see what this is like, you don’t really know what you’re involved in. And I say that completely positively. I mean, it was really a great experience. So everything happened for us pretty quickly. We went to Star University already with some bookings, really not knowing what we were doing. But we just kind of jumped in. In the beginning, you don’t know what you’re doing. You just got to jump in.
Allison Dudas (10:06)
Yeah. Yeah, so you hit the ground running, to be sure. And you went to the in-person STAR training in Florida. So not too far from you, I imagine. ⁓ And then what did ⁓ the training? So obviously, there’s STAR University, which is in-person, which is six days. Is that right? ⁓ And then when you come home, what does the ongoing training look like? Is it virtual? Is your coach coming to visit you? What’s it like?
Mark Soberman (10:32)
Yeah, I guess I’ll answer real quick and then Monica can kind of share her experience of it. ⁓ There is more training than you’re ever going to be able to actually take. And I say that in a positive way as well because… ⁓
We have an incredible amount of things to learn. mean, it’s just anybody getting into this has to realize that there is a learning curve. It’s doable. We’ve done it. Tons of people before us have done it. But in the beginning, it will feel quite overwhelming because you are representing a few dozen different products. Everybody does things a little bit differently. So each one of those individual cruise lines, tour companies, insurance companies, they will have their own training. you pretty much, if you wanted to every single day, you could attend training. Then you’re going to have, of course, your franchise and operating
your business. There’s training for that that Cruise Planners makes available. We have something called CP Genie, which is made available to us. That is like sort of the home base for all of the videos, the recordings, the webinars, the Zooms. I think the great thing is depending upon what direction you want to go in, how you want to customize your business, there’s training and support both recorded and in real time always available to you. And then we’ve got this amazing support team back at Home Office. So when we run into any technical problems, there are people at Home Office because Cruise
has great relationships with the cruise lines. If there’s ever a problem, we have great contacts at all of the cruise lines that are amazing to work with. I think if anything, if I ever have even a frustration, it’s like, I wish I could get to all of the training that there is and also maybe service all of the customers and the lead requests and everything coming in. So it’s almost an embarrassment of riches, kind of how much we have available to us. Yep. Yep.
Allison Dudas (11:59)
Sure.
Yeah, was so much opportunity for growth, clearly too.
Yeah.
Mark Soberman (12:12)
Yeah, I would second all of that. I feel incredibly supported and you know, the training is great, but also knowing where to go for the answer when things come up during the day, it’s really important and it’s great to have that access to that resource.
Allison Dudas (12:28)
When you first started your training, what systems or tools were the most helpful off the bat?
Mark Soberman (12:34)
Yeah, it’s interesting for us. ⁓ We really wanted to get a system called, well, CP Max is the system that we use, that we work in, and there’s something called E-Connect, which is, ⁓ Cruise Planners has set up basically like a connection with, I think it’s about a dozen or so of the major cruise lines, where in CP Max, we can kind of learn like one system in the beginning, and sort of use that in a way as a crutch, in order to kind of pull pricing, get quotes, even book directly. And that was really important to us. In particular, I’d say maybe the first
Allison Dudas (12:41)
Yeah. Right.
Mm-hmm.
Mark Soberman (13:04)
six months or so because later on we started learning all the individual cruise line systems and while some of them use the same software they all do it a little bit differently and that does take a little bit of time. You’re not going to be a pro at that from day one so it was really nice that we were able to kind of learn that on the fly as we went but in the meantime sort of have CP max and this system that we learned online and at Starryu to be able to like start doing the business from day one because we didn’t really want to spend six months just learning. We were ready to start tomorrow.
and to sell cruises. So I think for us that technology was really the game changer that got us off to such a really fast start. Yeah, agreed.
Allison Dudas (13:43)
Monica, I know that you’re of course a business owner and you have tons of experience. I’m wondering however if not being in the tech world like Mark, if you found the system super easy to navigate. Like if you could pick up your phone or go on your computer and navigate it or did you feel like there were some moments of confusion? How easy was it for you?
Mark Soberman (14:04)
Super easy, I feel like it’s all very intuitive. ⁓ did have, I’ve had businesses in the past that were online, ⁓ which helped a lot, know, just knowing how to navigate that world. ⁓ And then, but, the way they built it makes it real easy to know what to do and how to do something. I didn’t really struggle too much with that.
Allison Dudas (14:13)
Yes.
And you…
well, that’s so good. And I feel like too, I’ve gotten to talk to a few cruise planners franchisees and they talk about even like, you can do it from your phone and you know, I think you even mentioned before, like we’re booking cruises from cruises. So you’re like in your room on the cruise or Lord knows where on the cruise and booking travel for your clients. So it seems like it.
Mark Soberman (14:44)
Okay.
Yeah.
Allison Dudas (14:54)
It’s a pretty functional system if you’re home-based, but really you’re wherever your phone or wherever your laptop is based.
Mark Soberman (15:01)
Yeah, we have they have a great app that’s on our phone and I don’t do a lot of booking from my phone. ⁓ But it’s I use it a lot to look things up if you’re out and about and you’re talking to customers, you can look things up very quickly. ⁓ So it’s awesome. I really appreciate that app.
Allison Dudas (15:21)
Yeah, just that flexibility, especially if like one of the things you’re trying to do is travel and yeah. ⁓
Mark Soberman (15:27)
Because a lot
of times you’re not at your desk, you know, the one of the joys of working at home and working on the road is that you don’t have to sit in front of a laptop all day. But it’s good to have that at your, I always have my phone with me. So I can always answer questions if I have to.
Allison Dudas (15:30)
Great.
Now when you were onboarding and of course you went to Star University, did you meet up with other franchisees? Do you feel like there’s a strong franchisee community that you were initially plugged into?
Mark Soberman (15:55)
I would say yes. mean, one benefit of being at Star U was being ⁓ right up against the corporate culture, know, and meeting people there, but also other franchisees and knowing that you’re, you know, we may be sitting at home on the laptop, but you’re really part of a big community of people that are kind of doing the same thing that you’re doing. So it’s very valuable to have that ⁓ interface with other people.
Allison Dudas (16:23)
And it’s true too that you’re not, like some franchises, you’re buying into a territory which covers like specific zip codes, mileage, et cetera, but with cruise planners, there’s not that. ⁓ So you’re really just able to kind of work wherever.
How did you get your first clients with Cruise Planners?
Mark Soberman (16:42)
Yeah. So when we started the full-time travel, ⁓ well, it’s about four years ago coming onto that at this point, we had started a blog and a small YouTube channel and we were just going to share the experience a little bit because we thought there were definitely, and we met a lot of people that were like us. It wasn’t really focused specifically on cruising. It was just like, you know, hey, can you put things, put everything down? Can you put stuff in storage and could you travel part or full-time, you know, nomadically and run a business? And at that time it was different businesses.
So we built up a little bit of a community that way. We had people that enjoyed the channel, they enjoyed the blog, ⁓ and along the way we noticed that we were taking some cruises, sometimes for transportation, sometimes for other reasons, and we mentioned to people, ⁓ we were just getting people saying, ⁓ how did you do that, where did you do that? And in the beginning we really were referring out to another ⁓ cruise agency that I had worked with forever. I already had a super positive experience. They weren’t cruise planners, but I saw that.
the
benefit of working with somebody. I I was more than capable of maybe even picking my own crews and booking it direct, but I booked every single time with a travel advisor because of the extras that I got from them and the extra answers and support. And when things were a problem, you know, then being able to take care of it. So we tapped into that community initially and just started to put the word out that we’re not referring anymore, that you actually get a chance to work with us personally. And I think the people that liked us from those channels were like, that would be nice to work with Mark and
Allison Dudas (17:53)
you.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
I got a book with you. Yeah.
Mark Soberman (18:13)
I’m similar,
yeah, we’re similar to you guys, trying to do the same thing. We like the stuff that you’ve shared. We do try to share a lot of strategies and things that you just aren’t gonna get typically out there that we’ve learned, so we just try to share as much as we can, and that comes back to us with clients. As far as the first one that we had, I don’t really remember, do you remember? I think I remember you working in the back of the car, and I sort of made the comment that she’s like the Lincoln lawyer, if you’ve ever seen the Netflix show, because she was in the back, I was driving in the front, and she was trying
to make bookings while we were probably driving to training or something.
Allison Dudas (18:45)
I love
it. I love it. That’s like the perfect definition of like just starting out home based business, just kind of hustling while you can. What did you, what did you end up focusing on? So obviously you had a bit of a YouTube following, you started booking travel, you already had that audience and that buy-in.
Mark Soberman (18:53)
Yep. Exactly.
Allison Dudas (19:05)
What kind of got the ball rolling? Because you have had a very, I don’t want to downplay this, you have had a very successful first year. ⁓ So much to be proud of, so huge congratulations for that. How did it start to snowball? on YouTube. So tell us how you made that happen.
Mark Soberman (19:23)
Sure. Yeah, we have about, I wish it was 70, but about 30,000. it’s great.
Allison Dudas (19:26)
Okay,
Mark Soberman (19:27)
Yeah, so yeah, so we’ve got that.
community and I think for anybody who’s like listening to this, you don’t have to have a blog. You don’t have to have a YouTube channel. I think what you have to have besides the passion just for travel, it should light you up when you hear about another cruise ship being released and you want to get onto it. Whether you’ve even done a lot of cruising or not, I don’t think it matters, but you got to have that passion where, wow, this is just super fascinating. But you do have to have some ability to tap into some type of community. Like where we live now, this is like a 55 and up very super active community.
If we didn’t have the channel and the blog, we would tap into the networks here. It would not be that difficult. ⁓ So you have to have a little bit of that, that desire to go out and market a little bit. You’re selling cruises. It’s the easiest, best thing out there. People are buying their vacation. It’s not hard. You’re not even selling. I use the word selling, but not really. You’re just kind of informing them and educating them. They’ll sell themselves. Like that part is really not difficult. So, you know, I think we sort of targeted people that were a lot like us that had
a little bit more time that in our case we weren’t retired, though we have a lot of our clients are retired, but a lot of our clients are also working, but they are more willing to go on little longer trips. So 14 days, 20 days, you we talked to lot of people who are going to, they’re interested in a 30 day cruise, a lot of river cruises. So people that are looking for bigger experiences, probably mostly empty nesters, like we could have of course focused on, you know, families and kids in the Caribbean. That’s an amazing market, but that’s not really our market. Our market happens to be
Allison Dudas (20:47)
Mm-hmm.
Mark Soberman (21:00)
mostly empty nesters, a little bit of multi-gen, typically people more than a week long cruise. Some people using it for transportation, some people putting it together with other land based. ⁓ They don’t mind being gone on back to back cruises for 30 days or longer. we just tapped into the people that we were speaking to and the kind of information we were providing and not trying to be something to everybody, not trying to be the solution to every single person. Maybe the family with a five year old, a seven year old, we’re probably not the perfect choice for them. We don’t know all the answers.
on that, but we know all, not all, but a lot of the answers when it comes to people like us. 50 plus with time, want great experiences, but also great value.
And I would say once you get those people, we have multiple clients that have booked multiple times over and over. They just keep booking and then they’ll book on board. And so, you know, the booking will just show up in your inbox, you know. So that’s where it really starts to multiply, kind of pay off. ⁓
Allison Dudas (22:00)
Yeah, that recurring revenue that you don’t
even have to chase anymore. But I want to go back to something that you said. So you talked about how when you first started your YouTube channel, you were just sharing what you knew and you were even referring out when somebody wanted to book travel. And it sounds like even your advice to people thinking about this role as a franchisee is you’re really just I’m sure that you could go, you know, sell a cruise just by going and talking to somebody and being like, hey, we just got back from a cruise.
in the Arctic. It was amazing. And then it just kind of spitballed. So it’s really just sharing what you love and sharing what you do. ⁓ And I also love the idea that you just let go. Like maybe not every client is for you. ⁓ And there’s still enough business out there for everybody. So something that I’m interested in. So both of you are obviously in this together. How do you divide up responsibilities? Is it very clear cut? Like Mark’s in charge of this, Monica’s in charge of this.
or do you sort of mix it together?
Mark Soberman (23:00)
Yeah, I think it’s pretty clear cut. I’ll sort of explain what I do in the day to day, because I’m also still working on another business as well. But I think you sort of need to know your superpowers a little bit. And I think what I’m buying is when a request comes in from somebody, hey, this is who I am. This is what I’m looking for. Yes, some percentage of the people are specific, whether like, you I want to go on this celebrity cruise October 20, 27. But that’s the exception to the rule. Most of the time, it’s like I would like to go in April.
Allison Dudas (23:07)
Right?
Mark Soberman (23:30)
or October or maybe any of those months, I’m looking at Europe, I’m looking at Asia, I’m looking at this and that, and it’s sort of trying to figure out where to start with somebody like that because you can’t quote them 100 different cruises. You have to give them a few options, and I want to really personalize it and customize it to them. So I will typically take all of the initial lead requests, the people that are looking for something, I will try to find them specifically what they’re looking for. And sometimes the first reply is back.
⁓ will be just a lot of questions from us because we just need those answered.
We just don’t want to guess. Other times I can feel it enough based upon what they submitted on our form. We have an intake form and they filled it out completely. Not everybody does. And then we really can get to the point where I can even in the first reply back, we can quote very specifically some options. So it’s really a mix of the two.
But that’s fine. I always enjoy it anyway, because I’m like, maybe I help them, gave them some advice, some information, and they may come back to us three months from now, six months from now, or maybe they’re going to book through somebody else, and that’s perfectly fine with me, because at least I know the experience with us will be positive. You just never know. Maybe they’ll tell their friend instead, and that’ll work. So I kind of do all of that initial finding the deals, finding the best perks and amenities, seeing what Cruise Planners is offering, Signature, our consortium, what they’re offering. Maybe I can advise somebody, hey, you mentioned
But did you know if you went in April, you we have a way better deal or you’re a solo person April is way better than May or if you can push it off a month Did you know that this other cruise line has this deal? So that’s a lot of what I do ⁓ You know using our knowledge base. We use AI to a degree We use cruise planners tools in order to get them really what we hope is a pretty impressive helpful ⁓ Proposal and then Monica from that point. Yeah, I’m the one who books I book everything and I’m the customer relationship partner
So if they have any questions about their cruise, about travel insurance or anything, ⁓ booking their dining or anything that they might have regarding their trip, sometimes they need to make a change to the sail date or whatever, then I’m the contact person that handles those requests. Yeah, shore excursions, all that sort of thing. They have a lot of questions, a lot of people. So we’re here to answer all those questions. There’s a lot of them.
Allison Dudas (25:42)
⁓
I’ve spoken to a few franchisees that are married and it seems to be the case that you kind of like divide and conquer it. One person’s really good at one thing and the other person’s really good at others. All right, so just going back to year one, because you’re kind of, almost there, you’re almost celebrating that official first year, which is so incredible. What mindset do you think matters in your first year the most?
Mark Soberman (26:10)
I think… ⁓
just an incredible desire just to learn. mean, just realizing that you are, you’ll come in with some knowledge, some experience, whatever it might be, doesn’t have to be in travel at all, it doesn’t have to be in cruising. You could have taken very few cruises. You can learn all this. You can get on cruise ships. You can take tours. You can take virtual tours. But you have to be open and willing to really learn. But I think also you have to understand, you know, there is marketing involved. The customers aren’t just going to come to you. You’re gonna have to have some plan,
of attack, some strategy and cruise planners is great about having you know 20 different strategies that you could go ahead and jump on to but you have to find the ones that speak to you that work for you. Maybe you’re a great social networker like I’m not you know you know we’re just not we’re probably more introverted so we had to have different ways of reaching like our tribe and our people. Maybe you need to know some connectors I mean we have some great friends that are incredible connectors for us so we use you know not use them but you know they love talking about this stuff for us so you
you have to have some of that as well. I think for me, I would say just, you know.
the desire to learn, to kind of love the business that you’re in and just know that yeah, you are gonna market and you are gonna be really frustrated at times with what you don’t know. But the beauty of this, there’s an answer always. With the franchise model, we always have somebody we can contact, we can call, we have a personal coach. When we hit a stumbling block, it’s not like that’s it, you’re finished. No, you just gotta pick up the phone, send an email, send a chat, whatever it is, and then you’re good. And just be stubborn until you’re successful. What do you think, Monica?
and recognize that you may learn.
You won’t learn everything, but everything you learn, it’s all constantly changing too. So you have to kind of keep up with it and that can be a lot. It can be real hard to keep up with all the different offers that cruise lines have, all the different, all their all included packages or whatever, everything is always constantly changing. So you just have to not stop learning. You got to keep learning. Yeah, we laugh about what we, I guess when we first started, the first three months, we sort of thought we knew a lot. We knew it all.
and then I laugh about kind of our knowledge base then compared to now. But that’s fun. That’s what makes it really interesting. It never ever is boring. I mean, it’s pretty exciting to do this. Yep. Every booking is different. Yep.
Allison Dudas (28:30)
I love that. All right, so to close, I have a closing rapid fire round for you. So we can maybe I’ll give you like a big prompt and then Monica you can answer first and then Mark or whichever order you want to do. So one word to describe your first year.
Mark Soberman (28:52)
Busy. Rewarding.
Allison Dudas (28:57)
Biggest mistake you made your first year.
Mark Soberman (29:01)
Good question. There were definitely some mistakes made along the way.
I mean, honestly, probably sometimes just kind of making an assumption about a policy and not being 100 % sure on it and maybe kind of telling a client that. You have to be really, really careful on all questions that, you know, if it’s about refund or cancellation or anything like that. The information’s out there. Don’t always trust what you read online. Don’t always trust what AI says. Go to the source. So just sometimes just making sure that you’re super accurate with your answers. Yeah. Trust but verify. Always.
Allison Dudas (29:36)
Trust but verify. All right, the best decision that you made this past year.
Mark Soberman (29:42)
I’d say best decision that we made was probably really just going this direction. When we started the remote travel, you know, we both had the passion for travel. Like I told Monica, I go at some point we probably will be able to monetize what we’re doing. I just don’t know what it is yet. There was no plan to, to buy a franchise or to get with cruise planners. It just sort of revealed itself to us. And the smartest thing we did is we, we went for it. You know, we learned about it, we went for it and then we capitalized on it. And you know what, even if it wasn’t success, it’s been a great success.
Allison Dudas (29:56)
Mm.
Mark Soberman (30:12)
⁓
I would have been happy to because at least we took some chances to figure out how we were going to sort of monetize this this interest so it’s not all about the necessary the money but it’s a nice reward and it’s fun to be doing something you love but also being rewarded for it so I think that would probably be there for me yeah for me it’s yeah I would totally agree it’s funny how it took us this long to get here because we’ve loved cruising for forever we actually got married on a cruise way back when and we’ve done a
Allison Dudas (30:24)
Yeah.
Mark Soberman (30:42)
a lot of cruising since then. And it’s just a passion for us. So it’s funny that it took this long to figure out because it seems like a perfect fit for both of us. you know, so it worked out great.
Allison Dudas (30:59)
It seems like it. ⁓ Well, I just want to thank you both so much. I want to close with just some information about Cruise Planners. So as I said in the beginning, Cruise Planners surveys their franchisees to find out how they’re feeling about the franchise opportunities. So they ask them questions about training and support. They ask them questions about the franchisee community and so on. And Cruise Planner’s stats are really amazing. So.
Just to give a few things, 99 % of franchisees agree that they enjoy operating their business. 99 % of franchisees are likely to recommend this franchise to others. ⁓ they get excellent marks. So cruise planners get excellent marks in things like training and support, ⁓ leadership, core values, franchisee community, and self-evaluation, which means
when a franchisee is asked if they think it’s a good opportunity. Most franchisees are responding with, yes, it’s an excellent opportunity. So it’s so great to hear from actual franchisees like yourselves and to listen to how being a part of this system has made your life, well, better, I would guess, in the last year. And I want to congratulate you on such a successful first year.
Mark Soberman (32:18)
Yeah, thanks so much, Allison. It’s been amazing, so we’re excited about your two for sure.
Allison Dudas (32:22)
Absolutely. I imagine big things are coming. Well, thank you so much and I’m signing off from Franchise Business Review.
