Atlanta Lawyer Walks Into Food Tour Biz

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

It's always fun to feature people and businesses that I know here on the program, including Yesterday's Story about Pat and Caleb and their massive Kickstarter success. Be sure you check that out if you missed it. It's episode 989. These guys earned more than $400,000 for what is a pretty simple, pretty basic, yet also very practical and helpful, useful tool for video bloggers. Like I said, I have known Pat and Caleb for a long time, so it was really cool to see just how well their project is done.

Now Today's Story, I got to know the person in this story after I booked one of her walking tours in Atlanta. I was in Atlanta recently and I booked this little walking food tour. Her business is called Unexpected Atlanta, also uses the name Atlanta Food Tours. Now we're going to go behind the scenes and learn how this very popular and successful side hustle is becoming a full-time business bringing in multiple six figures and perhaps even on track to earn seven figures. Is that possible, seven figures with a local tour business?

Well, under the right circumstances, it can be. The story also includes an important lesson in paying yourself first. You might hear a lot of stories on the program where I say, "Oh, so and so is reinvesting in their business." It's a choice a lot of people make and it is important to reinvest in your business. But I also believe it's better to not reinvest everything. Even if it's a small amount of money, you should take some profit from your business as soon as possible.

And then in the long term with what's called Profit First, this model, Profit First, you pay yourself before you do anything else. I read about this model more in the book Side Hustle from Idea to Income in 27 Days. You can also look at the original concept as it was first coined in the book Profit First by Mike Michalowicz. So the story is called Atlanta Lawyer Walks into Food Tour Biz. Stay tuned, it's coming up right after this message from our sponsor.

Akilah McConnell was ready for a change in life. After law school, followed by four years at a prestigious firm, she was ready to call it quits. While many lawyers dream of making partner, she dreamed of traveling and seeing the world. So after doing some soul searching, Akilah and her husband decided to take a trip of indefinite length. She wasn't sure what she wanted to do next in terms of work, but she knew she needed that change.

Within three months of traveling, Akilah stumbled on a completely unexpected path. She started a travel and food blog called The Road Forks. To her surprise, it got picked up by major outlets like the LA Times. This began a new freelance career for her to gain followers and earn some extra money. She continued this endeavor for the next three years as their world travels expanded.

Her list of followers grew, as did her aptitude for storytelling. After traveling for nearly four years, Akilah and her husband learned that they were expecting their first child. As much as they loved travel and experiencing exotic places, they decided to come back to the United States to raise their child in their hometown of Atlanta. Akilah began doing some legal work for her husband's software company while still travel writing for magazines and websites. Again, she found herself in a rut and craving another pursuit.

She loved the storytelling aspect of writing, but it was difficult to write about travel when she wasn't doing much of it herself. What once was a desire soon turned into a dread. It caused her to think about what she loved so much about writing before. She discovered it wasn't actually the writing, it was the experiences she had in each location and the stories that came from the visits. She started thinking more about Atlanta and all of the food and history there.

What if she could share her city and its hidden secrets with locals and visitors alike? So that's exactly what she did. In 2015, Akilah cooked up a delicious and unique walking tour called Atlanta Food Walks. She first began by introducing this tour to family and friends. They offered to write reviews so the tours could gain exposure, and once a few reviews went up, she received her first sale from a stranger.

A woman from Holland was visiting, she came across Akilah's website and booked a tour. Having the stranger purchase a tour felt surreal and exciting. That first sale opened the door for many more to pour in. There are a lot of walking tours available in Atlanta, and it takes a lot to stand out. What sets Atlanta Food Walks apart?

Well, it is that unique storytelling approach. This authentic approach has caused Atlanta Food Walks to grow into a larger brand called Unexpected Atlanta, which now includes history tours as well. The tours are led by a group of knowledgeable homegrown Atlanta natives. It's become one of the top walking tours in the city, selling more than 6,000 tickets per year. To give you a little perspective here, in its first year, they sold 700 tickets and made $60,000.

This year, they're on track to bringing in more than $300,000. Akilah invested nearly $10,000 in the beginning for startup costs, which she says mostly went to education and training. She wanted to learn as much as she could before launching, and she might have been able to do it cheaper, but she really wanted to do it right and make sure she wasn't missing anything. One of her biggest lessons has been with growth and cash flow. In the first year, she relied on credit to fund the business, and she wasn't paying herself anything, but has since learned to follow the Profit First model, where you remember that you are your business's most important employee.

Even if it's just a few hundred dollars each month, pay yourself first. Her advice to anyone wanting to start a tour-based business is to do it because you love it and because it brings you joy. Don't do it just because somebody else has started one and done well with it. She has seen numerous other tour companies start in Atlanta for that very reason and then slowly die. By comparison, Unexpected Atlanta remains healthy, continues to walk an unexpected and compelling path.

Akilah has a full-fledged team and has turned this into her full-time work while the law has become her side hustle. Within the next five years, she hopes to hit seven figures in sales. As I said, I'm a paying customer of Atlanta food tours/unexpected Atlanta. I just found them online when I was visiting the city and thought I want to go and do a little bit of a walking tour, learn more about the history of the civil rights movement as it relates to Atlanta. I had a great experience.

I really enjoyed the tour. I thought they did a wonderful job. It wasn't Akilah on the tour. I got to meet her. She came out to say hi, but it was one of her tour guides who, as I said, just navigated a lot of different issues really, really well.

So I definitely encourage you if you're visiting the city or if you live in Atlanta, go check it out. Now, we've talked about a few different tour businesses on the program. I was looking at a couple of my favorites, episode 648. Food tour guide chomps down on a $100,000 profit. I believe that is Jessica in Denver who is doing really well with Denver-based tours.

And then episode 809, ABC News reporter dishes out profitable pizza tours. This is a guy who is specifically doing pizza tours in Chicago. And then to time travel back to year one, episode 201, food and travel writer creates food tours in Marrakech, earns $60,000. I gave you the numbers there, but we'll also link up those episodes in the show notes page. That page is at sidehustleschool.com slash 990.

It also features unexpected Atlanta and anything else I mentioned. Do come back tomorrow, my friends. Much more is on the way. 10 episodes to go until we hit 1,000. All right.

My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. the Onward Project.