Again in 2018, Lisa Peña heard a podcast about an entrepreneur in San Francisco who ran a strolling enterprise in San Francisco. The idea was easy: as an alternative of strolling on nature trails, city explorers stroll by way of alleyways and winding metropolis streets.
“I acquired that excited feeling that I’ve solely had just a few instances in my life and I knew I needed to convey city mountain climbing to Kansas Metropolis,” Peña informed In Kansas Metropolis.
The Kansas Metropolis resident began City Hikes KC the next yr as a facet hustle, charging clients $28 for self-guided excursions of the town she beloved. In the present day, that enterprise is a worthwhile, ongoing enterprise providing ten totally different mountain climbing routes with a employees of 6 guides. This is how City Hikes put KC on the map.
A ardour for journey
Like many profitable entrepreneurs, Peña took an exercise she had a ardour for and discovered a strategy to monetize it. A former Peace Corps volunteer and backpacker, she beloved to discover internationally and domestically. Peña has utilized that very same curiosity to her mountain climbing enterprise, taking vacationers and locals to sights off the overwhelmed path.
After listening to a podcast interview about UrbanHikerSF, she contacted firm founder Alexandra Kenin and requested her questions. Peña spent the following yr researching routes, establishing a social presence, securing insurance coverage, constructing a web site and determining a cost system.
Beginning out as a facet hustle
Peña began her enterprise in 2019 whereas working for the Lady Scouts of NE Kansas and 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 as a facet hustle,” she informed Market. “I did not know the way a lot cash I used to be going to make. I used to be actually ranging from scratch. There was no different city mountain climbing sector in Kansas Metropolis.”
The curiosity was so nice that she added one other tour to her enterprise, after which one other. She quickly realized she must give up her full-time job if she needed to get forward. “It was a scary leap,” she says.
One among her first strikes was to lift the value from $28 per head to $38.
Sluggish burning
Peña admits she did not make any cash within the enterprise for the primary few years. Her bills included insurance coverage, her guides and different work and life associated payments.
However in the summertime of 2020, she began getting extra guides and routes, and enterprise began to increase. “It has been an amazing factor through the pandemic as a result of we’re principally outdoors and we may be socially distanced,” Peña informed In Kansas Metropolis.
By 2021, over a thousand clients have gone on journeys along with her firm. By 2022, she had a lot work that she needed to rent extra guides and add extra routes.
By way of income, she is doing fairly nicely now. “I am lastly making an revenue that is a sustainable revenue,” she informed Market.
What company can anticipate
Peña says city hikers can anticipate to see a facet of Kansas Metropolis they’ve by no means seen, “even in neighborhoods they suppose they know. We be taught concerning the historical past and tales of the individuals who made a distinction in Kansas Metropolis and see totally different varieties of out of doors artwork, together with murals, hidden staircases, bridges, alleys and parks.”