Retired Air Force Nurse Turned Travel Agent Charles Russell
by Cheryl Rosen /For 22 years, Charles Russell carried the injured, and sometimes the dying, out of harm’s way on medical evacuation and critical air transport flights. Saving lives, he knew, was all about working as a team.
That skill at connecting is likely at the heart of Russell’s success in the travel business. Four years after buying a Cruise Planners franchise, the retired Air Force ICU nurse is a million-dollar-plus producer – and he credits his skill at networking with making it all possible.
From about $150,000 in 2014 and double that in 2015 and 2016, “each Wave Season has grown exponentially, to total gross sales of over $1 million last year. I’d say probably 50 percent of my growth is coming from networking; 20-25 percent from word-of-mouth referrals; and 25 percent from some very specific targeted marketing pieces, for which I partnered with my Royal Caribbean BDM,” Russell says.