Doing what you love goes a long way toward being successful: Travel Weekly

By the time you read this, I will have a new left hip, just in time for the Christmas market cruise on the Danube.

Since 2006 I've had 21 or 22 surgeries. As we worked our way down, including rotator cuff repair in both shoulders, I lost count.

A health scare on vacation last year almost ended my career.

I tore the meniscus in my right knee when I dismounted the horse-drawn carriage on Mackinac Island. X-rays of your hips show bone-on-bone contact in both of them, and we need to replace them, starting with the left.

I don't know why I'm telling you all this. For almost two years, this upcoming Christmas market cruise, which is a follow-up to a prior Rhine-Main Christmas market cruise, has been eagerly anticipated. It is good to have things to look forward to when you have made 81 laps around the sun.

A friend once said that if you want to be a travel advisor, you need to have as many experiences as possible so that you can sell the steak. That is one of the main characteristics that distinguishes good and bad advisers.

The upcoming cruise is exciting for me. I tell others about most of my vacations.

When she talked about the package she had found, you could hear the excitement in her voice. It was immediately apparent.

She used her competitive closing instincts to surpass sales goals.

The example of enthusiasm, competitive nature and earning more in our careers can be beneficial to most of us.

One of the ways we fostered such efforts was to put a small mirror on each agent's monitor, with a tag underneath it that said "SmILE!" The smiling person on the other end of the phone line can be heard by callers.

I wanted to give each agent a copy of the best seller I've ever written. We urged our agents to develop a habit of reading "How to Master the Art of Selling" once a year, because my copy is dog-eared from being read once a year. The people who did were more successful.

The agent said that they didn't need to read the book again. I pointed out that Michael Jordan played basketball for eight hours a day. It's happening every day.

Honing professional skills is a process that goes on for a long time. Life is much more enjoyable if you enjoy what you do and are pleasant doing it. It's the cherry on the sundae and I'm looking forward to it.