Jared Sherlock Pulls a Stunt at Cruise Holidays Meeting

This past weekend, I had the pleasure of attending a meeting of Cruise Holidays franchise owners and agents.

The weekend consisted of lots of workshops and presentations, but the evenings were spent doing what many of us enjoy doing best: socializing!

Saturday night, a young man named Jared Sherlock entertained our group. He’s a magician, but as we soon found out, he could probably moonlight (when he’s not doing evening magic shows) as a comedian. This guy was funny – I don’t want to divulge the details of his final act, but he had us practically rolling in the aisles!

Since it’s a couple days later and I’m still thinking about Jared’s show, I thought I’d pass along a few things I was reminded of. You could call them life lessons, or maybe even business lessons. Yes, these lessons do come from an illusionist, but they don’t stand to disappear any time soon.

The 4 Lessons Learned

1. Roll with the punches.

I know Jared Sherlock is a professional entertainer, but all of us could stand to be reminded that when life throws you anything – whether it be lemons or something much more light-hearted – just go with it! Case in point: one of the staff members brought his four year old son to see the show, and they were sitting in the front row. Within about five minutes of some basic interaction with the audience, it was clear that little Kaden was going to be up on stage, and soon. Some of the hilarious things that came out of Kaden’s mouth could not be scripted. Somehow, Jared just fed off it, and from that point on, he had all of us in the palm of his hand.

Smile, and the World Smiles with You

2. Smile.

See point number one – he’s an entertainer – but great attitudes are contagious. There’s a reason why comedy shows sell out – it’s because people like to laugh and have a good time. Jared’s on-stage persona wasn’t fake. You could tell he was having a good time, and he just wanted us to enjoy the evening with him.

3. Thank your clients, or whomever else you’re thankful for.

At the end of his show, we felt like Jared really appreciated being able to perform for us. Today, I noticed he’d even shared some pictures on his Facebook page that we had originally posted on our own Facebook. Sure, self-promotion on his part, but he’s so darn likeable we came away wanting to promote him.

This is a concept I once learned from marketing guru Peter Shankman: Self-promotion is getting other people to want to do your promotion for you.

4. Master your craft.

We couldn’t believe some of the crazy tricks Jared performed. He’s obviously spent hours and hours – maybe years – working on his show. It contained lots of surprises and even some danger – and who doesn’t love a little bit of that? But when it was time for the big finale, his tireless preparation paid off.

The longer I work in my field, the more I feel I need to learn. Sometimes, when we first enter a situation, we are so sure we know all the answers because we earned a college degree in it, or we have some other type of qualification. But I really feel like certain elements of my own professional game are just now starting to become more polished – 15 years after college. You may find the same holds true for yourself. If Jared’s doing this stuff now, what a thrill it’ll be to catch him on a cruise ship or in Vegas some day!

Practice Makes Perfect for Jared Sherlock

See more photos from the Cruise Holidays Mid-Year Meeting here.

A picture is worth a thousand words, so in this post we’d like to let images do the talking. They’re all courtesy of Cruise Holidays travel experts from across the United States and Canada.  

It’s the same reason you ask friends and family if they’ve been to the same place you’re hoping to visit. You want to know where to stay, where the best sights are, and the can’t-miss lunch or dinner spots. Cruise Holidays agents have cruised the world and want to share that type of insider knowledge with you.

Take these three examples:

Money Saving Tips and Tricks – A Whale of a Discount

Whale Watching in Cabo

Our experts at Cruise Holidays of Shelby (Michigan) took these  whale watching photos during an excursion of a 7-night Mexican Riviera Cruise. The owner, David Rentsch, had done a snorkeling excursion with this tour company in 2011, so when he returned for whale watching this spring, he was able to use the connections he’d made to obtain a discount for the group he was traveling with. These types of connections happen frequently with travel agents.

According to David, it was a trip they won’t soon forget:

“My family and I enjoy whale watching and I have been fortunate to have been on whale watch excursions in Hawaii numerous times, Alaska and now in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. I have seen most all of their behaviors like breaches, head slaps, fluke ups, tails slapping, tail dives, and even once saw a humpback whale calf playing with dolphins. What stood out about this sighting is that the whale breached about five times in a row while we were following his movements for about 20 minutes. As you can see from the pictures, it also exhibited almost all of the other behaviors as well.”

David added that they witnessed this activity at the end of March, near the end of prime whale viewing season in Cabo. These are the little details you don’t want to leave to chance, which a travel expert can help you with!

The Budapest Parliament During a Uniworld Boutique River Cruise

On the Forefront of the River Cruising Boom

Several Cruise Holidays experts created a Facebook album sharing river cruise photos through some of Europe’s most beautiful and historic sites. You can enjoy Scenic “Sound of Music” Salzburg, Tulip Time  in The Netherlands, and dozens of other inspiring photos from along the Rhine, Danube and more. Each photo contains a link to the travel expert who took the photo if you want to learn more about that destination or river cruise.

Curious About a Ship? Ask Us.

Finally, with more than 200 Cruise Holidays locations across North America and even Great Britain, there’s a very good chance that they’ve been on the ships you’re most curious about. They frequently are among the very first people to experience and inspect new ships, so they can better educate their clients which ship is right for them. On any given day, they might be on a ship you’re curious about. Here are a few photos recently taken by Cruise Holidays of Calgary aboard Celebrity Eclipse, a ship that debuted in 2010 and is very popular for those who are looking for an upscale, contemporary cruise experience.

Celebrity Eclipse Pool Deck

Don’t miss out on the insider expertise that can take your trip to the next level.

The next time you’re curious about a ship or destination, visit the Cruise Holidays Facebook page for new and exciting photos. Or go to their website and peruse their library of more than 180 cruise articles for people who love to cruise. 

Are you a single cruiser, a world cruiser, a cruise rookie, or a cruise deal hawk?

Great news: No matter how you cruise…there is a Facebook cruise community built just for you!  We highlight 5 quickly growing communities below:

Single Cruisers on Facebook

Are you single?  Are you able to travel when your friends are not able to travel?  Would you prefer to cruise with a large group of other single cruisers?   Then you need to join the quickly growing SinglesCruise.com Facebook page.  Many potential single cruisers have misconceptions about a singles cruise, so go ahead and join the Singles Cruise Facebook community to get feel for what makes SinglesCruise.com the world’s leading singles cruise provider!

Luxury And World Cruisers on Facebook

When you picture yourself at sea are you on a luxurious, more intimate cruise ship?  When you think of cruise lines does Crystal, Seabourn, and Regent come to mind first?  Cruise Specialists is the leader in luxury and world cruises.  On Facebook, Cruise Specialists has the most interactive community of luxury cruisers sharing live photos as their world cruises circle the globe. 

Cruise Deals on Facebook

Do you want to be alerted to the best cruise deals and sales on the internet?  CruiseDeals.com has over 61,000 cruise deal enthusiast in the Cruise Deals Facebook community.  CruiseDeals is regularly features in publications like the NY Times as a cruise pricing expert.  They share this expertise with you on Facebook.   And who doesn’t love truly Exclusive Offers: Right now, CruiseDeals is offering a Disney Cruise offer only available to the first of their Facebook community.  Only available to the 1st 150, LIKE the Cruise Deals page to get the offer.  

Cruise Rookies, the CruiseDeals community is also full of great advice for the novice cruiser. 

Local Travel Experts on Facebook

Cruise Holidays, founded in 1984, is the oldest cruise specialty franchise in the US.   Perfer to work with a travel expert who lives nearby….someone you can see face to face?  Cruise Holidays’ huge franchise network offers you that opportunity. On Facebook, Cruise Holidays shares photo albums loaded with vacation ideas from Cruise Holidays franchisees.  This gives you the opportunity to work with a travel professional who has been there.  Join the Cruise Holidays Facebook Community.

Win A Free Cruise on Facebook

WIN A FREE CRUISE – Everyone likes a cruise giveaway.  All Aboard Travel, the leader in cruise, air, and hotel packaging launched their Facebook page last week.  In celebration of the launch, they are giving away a cabin for 2 on the 10-night southern Caribbean Cruise on their 24^th Anniversary Cruise.   Outside of just a chance at winning a free cruise, you’ll want to join the All Aboard Travel Facebook Community if you like the idea of buying your Cruise, Air & Hotel in a package that save you money and time from buying them all separate.

Full Disclosure:  Most of you know that CruiseSource is the Travel Leaders Leisure Group blog and all of the brands mentioned in this article are in our family of brands.  This specialized expertise is what makes CruiseSource unlike any other cruising blog on the internet!  NY Times Recommends subscribing to CruiseSource.

Last Monday, I was on the treadmill at the gym when I saw that Jim Cramer & CNBC’s Mad Money was answering investment related tweets live on the air.

Being the cruise geek that I am, I thought ‘how cool would it be if while I’m here running that my tweet is answered live on the TV’. So, I quickly tweeted this:

Hey @jimcramer, what is your thoughts on the cruiselines? #RCL #CCL #madtweets

After 20 minutes, Mad Money goes off without responding to my question. No big deal, he was getting hundreds of tweets.  I don’t think twice about it. 

3 days later, on Thursday evening, I receive a Tweet from good friend @DerekHernquist letting me know Jim Cramer on Mad Money spent 10 minutes answering my question about the cruise lines.

If you’re interested in potentially investing in Carnival or Royal Caribbean stock or want to watch a good example of “Social TV”, here is the video:

My thoughts on Mad Money’s use of social media:

It was extremely cool that they used my tweet to drive the content for a full segment of Mad Money.  And they gave me props with a big Booyah! for tweeting the question.

Reality TV shows like ‘The Voice’ have been displaying live tweets for a while.  But using a Tweet or Facebook question to drive actual content takes interactive TV to the next level.  It shows the entire audience you care about your Twitter followers enough to fully take the time to answer their questions.

We’ve been using Tweets and Facebook questions to drive many of our blog posts on the CruiseSource for at least 2 years.  Here is an example where CruiseDeals a question on Facebook about what is included in the price of a cruise, and it was fully answered in a blog post: Click to read post.

I believe we will see more news content being driven from Twitter and Facebook as we move closer to TV 2.0.   It makes life easy on writers and producers.  Your audience is telling you on Twitter what they want to know more about and give you ideas for your show for FREE.  You just have to listen!

Where did Mad Money fail? So they took all this time [hours] to research and write a 10 minute segment for their show. They did not send me a tweet to let me know they will be answering it on the air. I guess they assumed that I would be watching 3 night later… maybe surprise me? But, I was lucky that a friend saw it and let me know about it. I believe they should have taken the 15 seconds to send me a follow-up tweet.

Author Note: @RichTucker is the founder/editor of CruiseSource and the winner of the 2009 Shorty Award for providing the best Travel Content on Twitter.

Tweeting on Social Fresh Cruise

I’m a certified cruise geek… and I regularly get asked the question “what are the best mobile apps for cruising”? 

The key to a good mobile app for cruising is the ability to add value to your cruise experience while not being connected to 3G, 4G, or Wi-Fi. 

On a cruise, you want to make sure that you have your phone in Airplane mode once you no longer get cell phone service.  If you download data while roaming on a cruise ship your bill will be astronomical. 

I use Wi-Fi on a cruise ship sparingly.   The connectivity is slow and fairly expensive.  With all this said, I continuously use my Samsung Galaxy II smart phone while cruising.   3 mobile apps added a ton of value to my last cruise on the Allure of the Seas. 

My 3 Favorite Mobile Apps for Cruising

1. Spotify.  Spotify is a mobile music app that facilitates sharing music with your Facebook friends.  I have the premium version which requires a $10 monthly payment.  With the premium version, I’m able to download up to 3000 songs that I have access to even when not connected to the internet.  Listening to my favorite music while working out, laying poolside, or relaxing on the beach makes the experience even better. 

2. Evernote.  Evernote has quickly become one of my most used apps when I’m not cruising.   Evernote is an app that allows me to take notes on my phone that can include photos and audio.  These notes live on “the cloud” so I can access them from any computer.   From my computer, I can quickly put an important email or webpage into an Evernote and access it later from my phone.   The issue with cruising is that if you are not connected to the internet, then you can’t access ‘the cloud’.   Which is true, but whenever my phone is connected to the internet it synchs my Evernote app to ‘the cloud’.  Therefore, all of my old notes live on my phone and when I write a new note while connected, it will synch to ‘the cloud’ when I return home from the cruise. 

Evernote is awesome for saving important information about your cruise and destinations that you want access to while cruising.   It is very useful for travel bloggers who want to take notes while cruising.  I wrote outlines to several blog posts in Evernote while on my last trip [including this one].   

When I getaway and relax, I seem to be full of great business ideas.  Evernote is perfect for capturing those ideas while on your cruise.

Even for those of you not cruising in the near future, I totally recommend downloading Evernote.

3. Google+.  Google+ is Google’s social media network.  While not connected to the internet, it is pretty useless.  Except for one piece of functionality that saved me a ton of time after my last cruise.   Google+ has the option to allow it to privately upload pictures & video automatically from your phone.   So, I captured all of my families pictures and video on my android phone.  When I connected to Wi-Fi or when we got back to cell service in Ft Lauderdale, the photos automatically uploaded.   Then when I got home, I decided which of the photos to make public.  This saved me 45 minutes - 1 hour of time.  Here are my Allure of the Seas Photos on Google+.

The key to an app being valuable on the cruise is the way it works without connectivity.   Please share other mobile apps that you have found useful while cruising in the comments. 

Disclosure:  Author, Rich Tucker was not paid or asked to recommend any of the apps in this post.  We do not accept payment for any posts on CruiseSource.  Rich has been on 20+ cruises in the last 5 years… he is a social media & mobile technology fanatic… he was even the first to tweet from a cruise ship.

On Facebook, we asked our experienced Alaska Cruisers: What is one that you can’t go to Alaska without?  And everyone who answered said to dress in layers to be prepared for the daily swings in temperature.   Some other suggestions were comfy shoes, raincoats, binoculars, camera, & flashlight.

As Becky Ploeg, offered up:

“Layers…..and jeans…..and comfortable shoes! Most importantly binoculars and a camera, STUNNING!!”

Win High-powered Binoculars on Twitter

CruiseDeals.com & Holland America Cruise has teamed up to bring you a FREE 20 minute Alaska Cruise webinar.  It will be great opportunity to learn why a CruiseTour is the best way to see Alaska.  What is a CruiseTour you ask?  Well, you should attend the free webinar.  Also learn why an Alaska Cruise is such a popular destination for those who have never cruised before.

We are offering the Webinar live at 1PM ET on Thursday, February 16th – bring your lunch to work, and login to learn.  We will take questions at the end of the webinar.

We are giving away a pair of PowerView® Series Bushnell® Binoculars [picture below $60 Value]… even if you won’t be able to enjoy them scoping out bears, eagles, or foxes in Alaska – you can use them for sporting events, concerts, bird-watching, or spying on your neighbors.

Tweet This To Enter Win:

Tweet this between February 10 – February 14th to be entered to win:

My Entry to win high-powered binoculars from @CruiseDeals celebrating their free #AlaskaCruise Webinar http://bit.ly/AKwebby

We will randomly draw the winner on Tuesday February 14th at 4 PM ET. 

Being a social media travel geek… I wanted to share this cool video showing a travel related brand using Twitter to “make a customer for life”.

Unfortunately, it is rare to see companies engaging in conversation with their customers or potential customers on Twitter.  Too many times, businesses on Twitter just use it to push out information.  So, I’m excited to spotlight an example of a travel brand [Delta Airlines], not just engaging on Twitter but using it as an opportunity to completely WOW their customer.

Outside of the great use of Social Media… another reason I ‘like’ the video: Ted Murphy, the customer in this video, cruised with us on the Social Fresh Cruise II and he booked his company IZEA‘s employee retreat cruise through us at CruiseDeals.com.    

In order for companies to succeed in social media they have to be committed to it and even more importantly passionate about the connections that the platforms allow. This video shows Delta’s commitment and their team’s passion to make a real difference leveraging the platforms.

If you liked @DeltaAssist’s video:

Author note: Rich Tucker has been combining social media & cruising since 2008… winner of the shorty award for best travel content on Twitter and hasting several social media cruise events.