This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey, hey, what's up? Welcome to Throwback Thursday. Well, first of all, welcome to Recital School. This is Chris Guillebeau. Listen, wherever you are in the world, I hope you're doing okay.
I hope you're taking care of yourself. I hope you are adjusting as we all are, as we continue to adjust to a changing world. Remember, there is always opportunity in the midst of uncertainty. Now, as I said, this is Throwback Thursday/where are they now? Where we take an in-depth look at someone whose story has evolved considerably since we first featured them.
Last week's segment was all about the long hairs, a group of men who not only sell hair ties, they actually sell a lot of hair ties, but also have a powerful message that results in a profitable bottom line by focusing on shared identity. I enjoyed working on that episode. It was episode 12.02, and here we are with episode 12.09. In this latest feature, we'll hear from Alexandra Kinen, also known as Alex, who owns an urban hiking business in San Francisco. She does this while working a day job, very successful business, but also works a day job, has a young child, does other things as you will hear in this episode.
Oh, and she also has a book, by the way. So I'm not sure if she has cloned herself somehow. We'll have to do an episode about that at some point. Now, like many of us, she has experienced a massive challenge in the wake of COVID-19, but she's also been able to adapt a bit. I don't mean to preempt her comments.
So let's hear directly from Alexandra after this message from our sponsor. And I will come back at the end to wrap us up. [Music]
My name is Alexandra Kinen, and I live in San Francisco, California. My side hustle is called Urban Hiker San Francisco, and I was featured all the way back on episode 158, an episode called Urban Hiker climbs to steep success in San Francisco. It's an urban hiking tour business where we explore the stairways, hills, and hiking trails of San Francisco.
And in our city, we've got 70 miles of trails. We host small groups, private groups, corporate groups on tours that last two to three hours, four to five miles. I got started with my side hustle following Chris Gilbo's ideas from his book, "The $100 Startup." So for very little money, I bought a domain, created a website with Wix, and made a free profile on TripAdvisor so that people could find my business. I registered my business with the city, joined San Francisco's Visitors Bureau, and got insurance. So that was a tiny bit later.
And I got started also by doing tours for friends or family to get TripAdvisor reviews. So between all that and doing some search engine optimization work on my website, people started finding my business on their own. I have a job at a company called Word Smithy, which is really cool. I get to do writing and marketing communications work for companies like Google and other tech companies. I do that 20 or more hours a week.
And the rest of the week I have for my side hustle, whether that's doing tours, planning tours, or working on writing guidebooks. So much has happened since back in episode 158. Personally, on a personal note, I had a baby who's now gonna be two on the 4th of July. So his very exciting, firework-filled birthday, professionally, a lot has changed too. So I still have that solid paycheck with my day job.
But for the side hustle for Urban Hiker SF, as I got closer to having the baby, I realized there would be a time probably before and definitely after where I couldn't guide all the hikes myself, 'cause I would be recovering. So I made sure I had other guides who could do my job. And now even two years later, my guides are still running most of our tours. I pitch in occasionally when all my guides are busy or if there's a large corporate group, when we all need to be working at once. But having guides has been really neat because it's made me feel like I have more of a passive income stream.
So that's been great. Still bringing in some money with even less effort. So that's great. Another thing I'm happy about is that I finally paid for a professional website. And you can check that out at urbanhikersf.com.
A third piece of news, going back to 2016, I wrote a hiking guide book called "Urban Trails San Francisco," which has now sold close to 11,000 copies. And now this May 1st, my second hiking guide book called "Urban Trails East Bay" is coming out. On a less positive note, because I was so focused on my book last year in 2018 and 19, I sadly didn't focus as much on the tour side of my business and it didn't do as well as it did in 2017. But now I have a renewed focus on my tour business this year. I've got a bunch of corporate events planned for May, June, and July.
The other wrench in the whole system is now, hopefully this is a thing of the past by the time some people listen to this episode, but we are in the midst of a coronavirus and COVID-19 outbreak. And I've had to cancel every single tour I have in March. So that has been a big hit for the business, hoping that everyone stays safe and that we can all recover so we can get back to business solidly and get back to those corporate offsights we have planned for May, June, and July. To the point of this podcast, it's essential to have multiple income streams in today's world. Like I know people are fully fronting core businesses and they are devastated.
Their income is also zero, but they need that to survive and I don't. So I'm very thankful. I have diversified income streams, but I also have some exciting challenges to talk about too. So one is that a client has asked me to run a 150 person event for them in July with a hike in a boat cruise on the San Francisco Bay. My largest tour so far has been 45 people.
So a hundred less than what I'm asked to do now. So this is gonna be a stretch, but an exciting one. If anyone wants to follow in my footsteps, I would say, do a lot of research. Oh, maybe not too much research. You gotta get started too, but kind of get a layup and land and research the other core businesses in your area.
Start to understand the landscape so you could see where you might fit in. Another thing, it's kind of general that applies to anyone, but it really applies to that 150 person event that I'm planning in July. And that is to know your strengths. So I'm the kind of person who's really good with big ideas. I'm less good with details.
So for my upcoming 150 person event, I'm working with a partner, Deborah from Tam Hiking Tours, which is another local tour company. She is fantastic with details and we're gonna partner up for the event together. And with her help, I believe everything will go smoothly. So you can't possibly do everything yourself and be good at everything. So don't be afraid to bring on partners if you recognize that you need someone else to compliment your strengths.
- Thank you so much, Alex. Really appreciate those updates. We actually featured her in the "100 Side Hustles" book. I've known her for a while and I'm just so happy to see how her business has grown and how she is adapting in this changing world. And we'll come back to that part in a moment.
But I wanted to say, I really appreciate or I really respect how early on she made this decision to bring in other guides. And it's really tempting to say, well, I'm just gonna do everything myself. And I personally am pretty good at that. When I say pretty good, I mean pretty bad because it's not necessarily a good thing to be like, I'm gonna do everything myself, especially in a side hustle like a tour business because that is time intensive. There are all those hours that you're out and about that you could be doing something else.
So good for her in bringing on these other guides and now two years on her guides are running most of her tours. So that is so smart. The longer I do these things, the more I realize just how important it is to plan for that in the beginning. Next, as I've said before as I'm trying to focus all this month and for as long as we need, my thoughts go out to every small business affected during this time. I am trying to support small businesses more than ever myself.
So hopefully Alex will be able to get back to her tours soon. But it's very good that in the meantime, she has other projects, other sources of income. Now her new book, "Urban Trails East Bay" comes out next week. You can learn more at urbanhikerssf.com. If you're listening sometime in the future, presumably that book is already out.
Urban Trails East Bay, urbanhikerssf.com. 2020 is our year of interaction. It's my privilege and great honor to bring you this program every single day. If you have a question, if you'd like to update us about your hustle, just talk about the challenges you're experiencing or maybe a good thing that you're experiencing, right? Because sometimes, you know, good things and challenging things happen at the same time.
Just come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. We're featuring them throughout the year, as you can tell. Last but not least, today's show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/1209. 1,209, 1-2-0-9. Thank you so much.
My name is Chris Guillebeau. Be sure you're subscribed to "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
