Again in 2018, Lisa Peña heard a podcast about an entrepreneur in San Francisco who ran a trade main hikes throughout San Francisco. The idea that used to be easy: As a substitute of taking hikes alongside nature trails, city explorers had been trekking thru alleyways and winding town streets.

“I were given that excited feeling that I have most effective had a few different occasions in my lifestyles, and I knew that I needed to deliver city mountaineering to Kansas Town,” Peña advised In Kansas Town.

The Kansas Town local introduced City Hikes KC the next 12 months as an aspect hustle, charging shoppers $28 to take guided excursions along with her on foot across the town she liked. These days, that trade is a successful, full-time enterprise that gives ten other mountaineering routes with a team of workers of 6 guides. Here is how she put City Hikes KC at the map.

A keenness for trip

Like many a success marketers, Peña took an process she had a keenness for and found out a approach to monetize it. A former Peace Corps volunteer and backpacker, she liked to discover the world over and in the community. Peña implemented that very same interest to her mountaineering trade, taking vacationers and locals to attractions off the crushed path.

After listening to the podcast interview about UrbanHikerSF, she contacted the corporate’s founder, Alexandra Kenin, and requested her questions. Peña spent the following 12 months researching routes, organising a social presence, getting insurance coverage, construction a web page, and working out a cost gadget.

Beginning off as an aspect hustle

Peña introduced her trade in 2019 whilst running for Woman Scouts of NE Kansas & NW Missouri. Her first hike used to be the Crossroads Westside City Hike, which weaves out and in of alleyways within the town’s Arts District.

Photograph by means of City Hikes KC

“I began it out as an aspect hustle,” she advised Market. “I did not know how much cash I used to be going to earn. I actually used to be ranging from scratch. There used to be no different city mountaineering sector in Kansas Town.”

Passion used to be so nice that she added some other excursion to her trade after which some other. Quickly, she discovered she’d must surrender her full-time task if she sought after to scale.”That used to be a frightening bounce,” she says.

One in all her first strikes used to be upping her worth from $28 a head to $38.

Gradual burn

Peña concedes that she made no cash within the trade the primary few years. Her bills integrated insurance coverage, her guides, and different expenses related to the trade and lifestyles.

However in the summertime of 2020, she began getting extra guides and routes, and the trade started to increase. “It used to be a super factor to do all over the pandemic since we’re most commonly outdoor and will also be socially distanced,” Peña advised In Kansas Town.

By means of 2021, over 1000 shoppers took hikes along with her corporate. By means of 2022, she had such a lot trade she needed to rent further guides and upload extra routes.

As for earnings, she’s doing simply effective now. “After all I’m making an source of revenue that could be a maintaining source of revenue,” she mentioned on Market.

What visitors can be expecting

Peña says city hikers can be expecting to look an aspect of Kansas Town they have by no means observed, “even in neighborhoods they suspect they know. We be informed in regards to the historical past and tales of people that made a distinction in Kansas Town, and notice differing types of out of doors artwork, together with work of art, walk-up hidden stairsteps, bridges, alleyways, and parks.”