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 a substitute of taking hikes alongside nature trails, city explorers have been trekking via alleyways and winding metropolis streets.

“I obtained that excited feeling that I’ve solely had a few different instances in my life, and I knew that I needed to convey city mountain climbing to Kansas Metropolis,” Peña informed In Kansas Metropolis.

The Kansas Metropolis native launched City Hikes KC the next yr as a facet hustle, charging clients $28 to take guided excursions along with her on foot across the metropolis she liked. Immediately, that enterprise is a worthwhile, full-time endeavor that gives ten totally different mountain climbing routes with a employees of 6 guides. This 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 found out a approach 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 mountain climbing 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 yr researching routes, establishing a social presence, getting insurance coverage, constructing a web site, and determining a fee system.

Beginning off as a facet hustle

Peña launched her enterprise in 2019 whereas working for Lady 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 facet hustle,” she informed Market. “I did not know the way a lot cash I used to be going to earn. I actually was ranging from scratch. There was no different city mountain climbing 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 should stop her full-time job if she needed to scale.”That was a scary leap,” she says.

One in all her first strikes was upping her worth 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 increase. “It was an amazing factor to do through the pandemic since we’re largely exterior and might be socially distanced,” Peña informed In Kansas Metropolis.

By 2021, over one thousand clients took hikes along with her firm. By 2022, she had a lot enterprise she needed to rent extra guides and add extra routes.

As for earnings, she’s doing simply high quality now. “Lastly I’m making an revenue that could be a sustaining revenue,” she stated on Market.

What visitors can count on

Peña says city hikers can count on to see a facet of Kansas Metropolis they’ve by no means seen, “even in neighborhoods they assume they know. We study concerning the historical past and tales of people that made a distinction in Kansas Metropolis, and see various kinds of out of doors artwork, together with murals, walk-up hidden stairsteps, bridges, alleyways, and parks.”