Busy Marketing Professional Fills Niche with Biking Wine Tours

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

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Greetings and hello. This is Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School. Couple things for you today. First of all, a story, of course. And this one's about a busy marketing professional who creates a series of wine tours by bicycle in Canada's Prince Edward County.

But also I really like something she says in this story. She talks about the idea of how if there is an idea that keeps you up at night, maybe you should pay attention to it. And in her case, it led her to this profitable side hustle. I think this is a good principle for all kinds of things. If you've got something that's occupying your mind and you can't get it out of your head, you've got this idea and you might have lots of ideas that come and go, but this one idea just kind of sticks there.

It's probably there for a good reason and you should do something about it. Now, ideas aren't everything. In your side hustle journey, you need to go from idea to offer. And we'll look at that through this story and I'll also kind of recap it at the end because it's important. That story and those lessons come in right up after this.

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Erin Burry didn't think she had time for a side hustle. As managing director and a partner in a creative communications agency, as well as a frequent speaker with the National Speakers Bureau, she had a lot on her plate, but she also had an idea that wouldn't go away. Erin had grown up visiting Prince Edward County, a wine region about two hours outside of Toronto. As she got older and of drinking age, her dad moved there and she would visit every summer with friends. They all loved touring the wineries and they noticed that there were limo tours available, but unlike other wine regions, there were no bicycle tours.

Erin knew this was a popular activity offered elsewhere. She also believed that if she didn't create something, someone else would. As she put it, if your idea keeps you up at night because you know you'll be annoyed if someone else does it before you, it's a good sign that you should pursue it. So Erin began planning her side hustle called the County Wine Tours. She did it with two of her best friends and the first step was figuring out a route that had enough wineries within cycling distance.

Erin approached wineries on a potential route in order to line up their regular stops along with some backup options for busy days or in case of any special requests. When selecting wineries, she considered their offerings to make sure there was a good variety of tastings and also a good location, both in terms of proximity to each other as well as how far they were from the starting point. With all these considerations in mind, Erin selected five stops along with some of those backups. And the next step was to get some bikes. Luckily, a family member worked for Giant Bikes, the world's largest bicycle manufacturer.

So Erin worked with her to select a fun cruiser bike with custom accessories that would be both comfortable and really stand out on the road. They purchased 10 bikes, plus helmets, baskets for the bikes and repair tools. With the bikes ordered in the route picked, branding and marketing came next. Erin and her two friends focused on a few key areas, most importantly, search engine optimization and Google AdWords. Since most people begin planning a wine we can get away by Googling a few key terms.

They're currently running both Facebook and Instagram ads and using their own social media to get people a peek into what it's like to go on one of their tours. Setting up their Trip Advisor profile was another major must for their business so that they can capture those word of mouth recommendations online. They also invited media to the area to take a tour. And after a lot of planning on weekends and evenings, the county wine tours launched in May of this year. Their website is built on WordPress so that they can easily maintain it with online scheduling and payments processed by a system called Checkfront.

The tours are priced at $95 per person and so far they've been completely booked up on weekends with anywhere from two to 10 people on a tour. Plus, so far there's also been one or two midweek tours as well. With anywhere from five to 10 inquiries coming in every day, Erin and her co-founders are excited that their great idea is gaining so much traction so quickly. And in fact, their biggest problem at this point is managing demand on peak days. With the framework in place for public tours, they've also created private tours so people can book for birthday parties or bachelorette parties as well as corporate tours that companies can use as part of a retreat.

For those that prefer a beer over wine, last month they launched a brewery option. It's clear that there's lots of room for expansion, but they plan to ride out the season with their current bikes and then decide how many to add for next year. Now here's something fun. There's already been a number of special celebrations on the tours, but Erin's favorite by far is the one she led the first weekend in July. She hosted a private tour for her friends, which was intended as a special way to share her side hustle and a beautiful wine region with them.

But at the last tour stop, she was the one who was surprised her boyfriend proposed. The winery was in on it and ready to pop the sparkling wine when she said yes. A good time was had by everyone there. Erin hopes that everyone who goes on a tour has a memorable occasion, but she makes no promises that any future tours will include a proposal. [Music]

So I mentioned at the top of the episode that you have to go from idea to offer.

We're gonna look at this a bit more in future episodes. It's also a whole chapter in the side hustle book that comes out in September. And this is important because a lot of people don't get past the idea phase. And for you to have a profitable side hustle, which is what this is all about, it's not just a hobby, you have to go from idea to offer. So in this story, the idea was wine tours by bicycle in this beautiful region a couple hours out of a major city.

But it was only as Erin and her friends worked on the project that they came up with the actual offer. And the offer is that $95 a person tour. There's probably some more details for it on their website, but that's what people actually sign up for. So as soon as possible in your planning, you wanna think, okay, I've got this idea to make this thing. Maybe it's a course, maybe it's a coaching program, maybe it's some kind of resource I'm gonna create and sell.

I would encourage you sooner rather than later, ask yourself not only what is this about and who is it for, but also how are you gonna present it? What are people actually going to exchange money for? Because when you do that, you're gonna get to a much more concrete phase of your side hustle quicker. And also you might be able to eliminate some ideas. You might have multiple ideas and when you take them and put them into offers, you realize that some of them are not super compelling.

Fortunately, Erin and her friends did find a super compelling idea. They did take action on that idea and they transformed it into an offer. They've got some real traction. They're not just cycling uphill. In fact, the idea even led to a chain reaction as they expanded to have a brewery tour and then the private events.

And of course, we'll see what they do next season. Side hustle school listeners, as always, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. Today's show notes are online at sidehustleschool.com/208. Hope you have a wonderful day. I'm Chris Guillebeau "This is Side Hustle School." [Music]