Lucy is a police officer with three years left until retirement. But her story with travel started long before the force, and if you ask her, it never really stopped.
When she left college she went straight into travel, spending eight months at Lunn Poly, the much-loved high street travel agent famous for its red check suits. She loved everything about it. The logistics, the planning, the moment a client found exactly the holiday they were looking for. Then life took a different turn and she joined the police, where she has spent the past 27 years.
The passion for travel never left though. It just waited.
When she started thinking about what retirement might look like in a few years, travel felt like the obvious direction. So she started building her plan early. She found what looked like a travel business opportunity through a friend, signed up, and got going.
It did not go the way she had hoped.
Why the first franchise was not the right fit
The competitor Lucy joined operates a very different model to The Travel Franchise. The emphasis was not on building a travel business in the traditional sense. It was on recruiting people underneath you, growing a team, building a network. Lucy had no interest in any of that.
“I just wanted to be a travel agent,” she says. “Book people’s holidays. I wasn’t interested in managing anyone. I manage people at work and I didn’t want to be doing that as well.”
The support was another issue. Questions went unanswered or got lost in group chats where members were left to crowd source their own solutions. The pricing structure was rigid, with no flexibility to discount or compete on price, which meant Lucy was regularly losing bookings to clients who could find the same holiday cheaper elsewhere.
“The support wasn’t there,” she says. “You were left to your own devices.”
After a few months she knew she needed something different. Something with proper structure, proper support, and a business model that actually functioned like a travel agency. She just did not know where to find it yet.
The airport lounge conversation
Lucy was heading to Dubai with friends when something unexpected happened. Sitting in the Heathrow lounge, she got talking to the man next to her about travel. He turned out to be a Not Just Travel consultant who had built a very successful business. She mentioned her experience with the competitor. He told her what The Travel Franchise looked like from the inside.
They exchanged details, kept in touch while on their respective holidays, and by the time Lucy was home she had made her decision. She signed up, completed her training, and did her first booking an hour and a half after finishing.
“I had people waiting for me to complete my training before they would let me book for them,” she says. “I think I did three bookings that weekend.”
The contrast with her previous experience was immediate. Structure, a dedicated business consultant, a support line available until eight in the evening, and access to a wide range of suppliers with genuine pricing flexibility.
“You’re not left to your own devices,” she says. “The support is just there. The helpline is there and they’re really helpful. I’m sure they’re probably rolling their eyes somewhere but you never get that impression from them.”
The Money Back Challenge: the thing she never thought she could do
When Lucy first heard about the Money Back Challenge, the opportunity to earn her entire £14,995 franchise fee back within twelve months if she hit a set commission target, she didn’t take it seriously as a personal goal.
“It sounded colossal,” she says. “I thought, I don’t think this is something I’ll be able to do.”
Working forty hours a week in the police, she built the travel business in every gap she could find – evenings, weekends. Calls to suppliers the moment she got home, before they closed at half five. Quotes done late at night after the family had gone to bed. She wasn’t following a rigid plan or working set amount of hours every day. But she was just showing up consistently and doing the work in a way that suited her and her family’s needs.
The summer months were solid. But November wobbled and her head dropped, the momentum slowed, and she had a few weeks where she genuinely was not sure whether she was going to make it.
“It felt like a never ending circle,” she says. “I was a bit frustrated.”
Then came December, and with it a decision that nearly did not happen. The Millionaire’s Retreat in Lanzarote fell on her daughter’s sixth birthday. Lucy was close to target and knew the retreat could be the catalyst she needed. But missing her daughter’s birthday wasn’t something she took lightly.
Her husband made the call simple.
“He said, you wouldn’t want to not go and then wish you had,” she says.
She decided to attend the retreat and came home re-energised, clearer on her targets, and with a renewed determination that changed everything.
January was, in her own words, mental.
“I did about a quarter of the Money Back Challenge in January alone,” she says. “And then it just sort of went from there.”
Ten months after finishing her training, Lucy’s achieved the Money-Back Challenge and got her entire £14,995 franchise fee refunded. And she achieved it working part time, around a full time job in the police, without ever having set it as a firm goal at the outset.
“I never thought it would be a thing,” she says. “But then when I started doing it I was like, well actually if I carry on like this it might be in with a chance. And then the closer you get, you think, oh actually, yeah, there is a chance.”
A few weeks after the interview she was heading to Mauritius. On a trip she had not paid for.
“It’s kind of like having a free business,” she says. “Which is great.”
How she finds clients and what keeps them coming back
Lucy is the first to admit she doesn’t consider herself a natural salesperson. She never pushes, never closes aggressively, and does not follow any conventional sales playbook.
“If it’s the right thing, they will buy it,” she says. “You don’t have to sell it to them.”
Her approach is built entirely around customer service. She messages hotels before clients arrive. She checks clients in. She does the small things that clients would never get if they booked online, and which keep them coming back and sending their friends.
“Everyone likes talking about holidays,” she says. “It’s a nice contrast in my line of work, where generally people aren’t smiling. When I talk to clients they’re happy because we’re talking about holidays.”
Most of her early clients came through people she already knew. More recently her social media following has grown and she is starting to see enquiries from people with no prior connection to her at all, recommendations passed along by clients who trust her and want their friends to have the same experience.
The plan from here
Lucy has three years left in the police. When she retires, the travel business becomes her main income. She left her love of travel on a shelf for 27 years while she built a career in the force. Now she is building it back properly, one booking at a time, with a client base that is already well established before she has even gone full time.
“It will seem really weird when that’s all I’ve got to do in a day,” she says. “I’m sure it will seem really easy.”
Her advice to anyone sitting on the fence?
“You can’t expect to build a business without putting in the hours and the effort. But if you work hard at it, it pays dividends. For me, the Money Back Challenge proved that. And I never thought I’d be able to do it.”
