Again in 2018, Lisa Peña heard a podcast about an entrepreneur in San Francisco who ran a enterprise main hikes throughout San Francisco. The idea was easy: As an alternative of taking hikes alongside nature trails, city explorers have been trekking by alleyways and winding metropolis streets.
“I bought that excited feeling that I’ve solely had a few different occasions in my life, and I knew that I needed to deliver city mountaineering to Kansas Metropolis,” Peña informed In Kansas Metropolis.
The Kansas Metropolis native launched City Hikes KC the next 12 months as a aspect hustle, charging prospects $28 to take guided excursions along with her on foot across the metropolis she liked. As we speak, that enterprise is a worthwhile, full-time endeavor that gives ten completely different mountaineering routes with a workers of 6 guides. Here is how she put City Hikes KC on the map.
A ardour for journey
Like many profitable entrepreneurs, Peña took an exercise she had a ardour for and discovered a technique to monetize it. A former Peace Corps volunteer and backpacker, she liked to discover internationally and domestically. Peña utilized that very same curiosity to her mountaineering enterprise, taking vacationers and locals to sights 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, establishing a social presence, getting insurance coverage, constructing a web site, and determining a fee system.
Beginning off as a aspect hustle
Peña launched her enterprise in 2019 whereas working for Woman Scouts of NE Kansas & NW Missouri. Her first hike was the Crossroads Westside City Hike, which weaves out and in of alleyways within the metropolis’s Arts District.
Picture by City Hikes KC
“I began it out as a aspect hustle,” she informed Market. “I did not understand how a lot cash I used to be going to earn. I actually was ranging from scratch. There was no different city mountaineering sector in Kansas Metropolis.”
Curiosity was so nice that she added one other tour to her enterprise after which one other. Quickly, she realized she’d must stop her full-time job if she wished to scale.”That was a scary leap,” she says.
One among her first strikes was upping her value from $28 a head to $38.
Sluggish burn
Peña concedes that she made no cash within the enterprise the primary few years. Her bills included insurance coverage, her guides, and different payments related to the enterprise and life.
However in the summertime of 2020, she began getting extra guides and routes, and the enterprise started to growth. “It was a fantastic factor to do throughout the pandemic since we’re largely outdoors and may be socially distanced,” Peña informed In Kansas Metropolis.
By 2021, over one thousand prospects took hikes along with her firm. By 2022, she had a lot enterprise she needed to rent further guides and add extra routes.
As for income, she’s doing simply advantageous now. “Lastly I’m making an revenue that may be a sustaining revenue,” she stated on Market.
What visitors can anticipate
Peña says city hikers can anticipate to see a aspect of Kansas Metropolis they’ve by no means seen, “even in neighborhoods they assume they know. We be taught in regards to the historical past and tales of people that made a distinction in Kansas Metropolis, and see several types of out of doors artwork, together with murals, walk-up hidden stairsteps, bridges, alleyways, and parks.”
