Physician Assistant Peru-ses Machu Picchu Treks

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

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Oh, the glorious days of travel. Remember what it was like to get on a long flight, fly across the country or fly to another continent, go on a big adventure. I used to do that all the time, but these days, not so much. Perhaps the same is true for you, almost certainly the same is true for you. Well, in some parts of the world, at this point in time, some types of safe trips are possible.

So we're beginning to see not really a travel resurgence, but it's more an adjustment, careful micro adjustments, let's say. I personally am no longer as concerned about flying itself. It's been a lot of research that shows most COVID spread actually doesn't come from flying. It's possible to fly safely. Of course, travel is much more than just flying.

And one of the reasons I'm not doing as much now is because things are so limited in so much of the world right now. So you could go to a certain place, but what are you gonna do when you get there? Because so much is closed, understandably. So accordingly, we have held off on a lot of travel stories recently, for obvious reasons. And many travel-based businesses are struggling, also for obvious reasons, but there are exceptions.

And I enjoyed working on today's. It's really fun to work on a travel story of somebody who's doing well and trips that are able to resume now and such. You'll hear more in the story. It is about an orthopedics assistant in the United States who befriends his local guide while trekking to Machu Picchu in Peru. They then decide to start a tourism service together.

Peruvian borders are no obstacle to success. Did you see how I did that? Thanks to Mike, our writer, for coming up with that one. We're calling this story "Physician Assistant, Perusas, Machu Picchu Treks." That story, for all its glory, and some puns as well, is coming up after this brief message from our sponsor. Do stay tuned.

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Kevin Gro has always loved to travel. In 2015, he was working as a physician assistant when he decided to visit Machu Picchu. The ancient city is nestled high in the mountains of Peru. Getting there is a formidable four-day task, taking adventurers through majestic scenery and exhaustive mountain passes. The conditions require that anyone trekking there must be accompanied by a guide.

For Kevin, that guide was a local named David Visagra. David grew up in a farming town nearby and worked for a local tour operator. However, he'd always dreamed of starting his own company to guide visitors from around the world through his own backyard. In fact, he'd tried it once before, but failed. Guiding is serious business in Cusco, the historical city near Machu Picchu, and competition is fierce.

Without any experience in marketing, he couldn't compete with the larger local businesses. As he explained this problem to Kevin on day two of the trek, Kevin's mind began to wander. He had seen firsthand what a fantastic experience the trek was and put forth an idea. If David could handle all the logistics in Peru, he would find a way to market to tourists in the US. In a handshake deal on day four of the hike, they agreed to start Kachi Life, a travel company specializing in tours of the region.

David would arrange permits for the hikers, local porters, equipment, and food. Kevin would build a web presence and handle all the marketing. And once he returned stateside, he got to work. The first thing he did was spend about $1,000 to file the business paperwork and create the entity. Those were the only hard costs.

After that, the only investment would be his time. That meant learning WordPress to figure out how to build a professional-looking website, creating content to attract visitors through Google, and exploring various other methods to get the Kachi name out there to those seeking adventure in Peru. Kevin knew he wouldn't be able to compete in search engines against established companies for the most competitive keywords. Instead, he began writing content around the specifics of visiting Peru itself. He chose topics like Peru travel vaccinations and wrote posts about them.

In addition, he launched a podcast covering, well, Peru travel tips. This was slow going, but after almost a year, they finally had their first group booking directly through the website. Lining this first client felt like walking over the sun gate and spotting Machu Picchu for the first time. It was an awesome feeling, although it came with a small concern. Kevin looked up the address of the client on Zillow and noticed that their home was a giant mansion.

It turns out that booking was made by the daughter of a very prominent American entrepreneur. This caused Kevin to worry. It was Kachi Life's first tour. If something went wrong, it could cause a serious problem with their reputation. And given the status of the person, they could get sued.

Kachi Life would tumble down the mountain if Ford ever had a chance of reaching the peak. All right, that might sound a little irrational or a bit extreme, but for your first gig, you worry. For a brief moment, Kevin thought about alpaca-ing his bags and joining that first tour so he could monitor it himself. After thinking it over though, he realized if this was going to work, he'd have to trust David to handle things on his end. Plus, he couldn't take time off work for every tour.

Luckily, his concerns were ill-founded. The tour went great and the attendees called it a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Kachi Life had started up the incline and Kevin now believed the summit was achievable. Over the next year, he produced more content for the blog and regular podcast episodes. In his effort to keep costs down, he also experimented with influencer marketing.

He contacted people in the travel space with good-sized social media followings and offered them a free tour in exchange for exposure. This cost very little because they could simply hop on an existing tour, yet the results were excellent. With each happy customer, the word of mouth spread and Kachi Life soon had referral business coming in on top of the new business being funneled by their content. By the beginning of 2020, this side hustle was making $60,000 per year. But you probably know the next part of the story.

COVID-19 became a cloud covering the summit, making the next steps a bit more foggy. The Peruvian border was closed for several months and this meant, of course, the tourism industry has taken a huge hit, a hit extended to Kachi Life. While upsetting, Kevin still has his day job. He knows tourism will be back in full swing before too long. In fact, the region is already reopening this month to visitors from select countries.

He's been taking the time to increase the amount of content he produces to keep Kachi at the forefront of discussion. Furthermore, to attract people who may want more of a DIY approach to exploring Peru, he and David are creating a Peru travel guide, which they hope will produce additional, non-tour-related income. And as soon as it's feasible, they also plan to expand their tours to Bolivia and Mexico. [Music]

Well, as I mentioned, there are increasing opportunities for travel in the COVID age, safe travel in the COVID age, I should clarify. So it's great to hear about Machu Picchu.

In fact, going to Machu Picchu during a less crowded time sounds quite appealing. I've been to Peru a couple of times, but I've never actually gone on this trek. And probably it's because there's something like, one or 2 million people that usually go to this site every year, an average of more than 4,000 a day. So I actually haven't been that excited about it. But now, it might be a very different experience.

Iceland also has a comprehensive plan to welcome American tourists and others. Turkey and Greece have different plans in the works, et cetera. So I think there will be increasing opportunities over the next six months or so. And of course, hopefully we'll all have a vaccine and all will be well at some point. And they'll look back and say, "Man, what did we learn this year?" But in the meantime, I hope you're doing something to take care of yourself.

I hope you're looking after somebody else as well. Congratulations to Kevin and David on starting up Kochi Life. I'm glad to see as well that they're trying to diversify, looking at other options and such. Listeners, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. To find the show notes for today's episode, learn more about Kochi Life, anything else I mentioned, just go to sidehustleschool.com/1408.

That is 1-4-0-8. Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you'll come back tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]

- From the Onward Project.