IAM826- Founder Shows Travelers Around Washington, DC

Please Note: This is a rescheduled episode from earlier this year (recorded in February 2020) with Rob. Due to COVID-19, we pushed back the schedule of this podcast but thought it was a great interview and wanted to publish it with Rob agreeing. While we published a special episode in place of the original podcast, and business hasn't picked back up for Rob. He's currently running tours by request but not at nearly the same volume.

Rob Pitingolo founded Trip Hacks DC to share his best tips and travel hacks with Washington, DC visitors. He hosts the Trip Hacks DC podcast and YouTube channel and is a tour guide who loves to show travelers around the nation’s capital once they arrive. Trip Hacks DC tours has hosted over a thousand guests since it launched.

• CEO Hack: (1) Book- Side Hustle by Chris Guillebeau (2) Think a little bit outside the box
• CEO Nugget: Think beyond me
• CEO Defined: Making sure customers gets exactly what they want and leave happy

Website: https://www.triphacksdc.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/triphacksdc
Twitter: https://twitter.com/triphacksdc
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/triphacksdc
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Trip-Hacks-DC-Guide-Washington-ebook/dp/B07KNCDQ8Y

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Full Interview:

Transcription

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00:02 – 00:27
Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

00:30 – 00:38
Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I Am CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Rob Patingolo of TripHacks DC. Rob, it's awesome having you on the show.

00:38 – 00:41
Rob Pitingolo

Thanks, Gresh, glad to be here.

00:41 – 01:09
Gresham Harkless

Super excited to have you on, Rob. I really appreciate you for hopping on the show. And what I wanted to do was just read a little bit more about Rob so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. Rob founded Trip Hacks DC to share his best tips and travel hacks with Washington, DC visitors. He hosted the Trip Hacks DC podcast and YouTube channel and is a tour guide who loves to show travellers around the nation's capital once they arrive. TripHex DC Tours has hosted over a thousand guests since it launched. Rob, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:09 – 01:11
Rob Pitingolo

Absolutely, let's do it. Let's do it, let's make it happen.

01:11 – 01:17
Gresham Harkless

So I wanted to kick everything off and hear a little bit more about what I call your CEO story, what led you to get started with your business.

01:17 – 02:11
Rob Pitingolo

Sure, Absolutely. Well, I've been a tour guide now for 8 years, and I've done trip hacks in DC for 3. We're about to start year 4, just at the time that this podcast goes live. And so as a tour guide, I have been showing folks around Washington DC. I love doing that. I always kind of wanted to branch out from just being a tour guide, working for a tour company and doing my own thing, to having my own company. It took a while to get there because the big challenge in this industry is that it's so heavily driven by advertising and it's hard to outspend the big guys when you're just getting started and when you don't have a lot of resources off the bat.

So that's why I started the Trip Hacks DC YouTube channel and podcast that you mentioned. I give my best tips, tricks, and travel hacks to folks who are visiting Washington, D.C. They get to know me a little bit, and then hopefully they watch enough videos and listen to enough podcasts that they decide, hey, I wanna have this guy show me around when they come.

02:11 – 02:31
Gresham Harkless

Yeah, it makes so much sense, and I know it probably varies. I'm sure you talk with the people that come to DC and how long they're gonna be here. But there's literally, and I grew up here, so there's literally so much that you can do, so many places you can go that sometimes you get overwhelmed and you need somebody that has that expertise that can kind of probably guide you as you're able to go through your visit.

02:32 – 02:52
Rob Pitingolo

Absolutely, it's very overwhelming when, especially if you've never been here before, you're just looking at a list of all the things that you can do, all the museums you can go to and the sites and the fact that there are over 100 hotels in Washington D.C., not even to mention the suburbs. So just trying to navigate all of that when you're planning a trip is challenging and I get that and I think that's what's appealing To a lot of people when they find the YouTube channel and podcast.

02:53 – 03:07
Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely any way you can find an easy button. That is always the way to go So I know you touched on it a little bit I want to hear a little bit more on like some of the things that you might have on the YouTube channel the podcast And some of the content that we can find there.

03:07 – 03:37
Rob Pitingol

Yeah, so the YouTube channel I try to do about 5 to 10-minute videos typically closer to 5 minutes and they're just Tips that you can use for your trip. So my most popular video by far, it's always been the most popular video, is how to ride the DC Metro. And to you and me, we live here, we've lived here a long time, it seems obvious it's just something that's second nature, but I realize that a lot of people who visit, this is a big city. And you know, we take that for granted, but they have maybe never ridden a metro or a subway before, and so it can feel overwhelming. They wanna make sure they're doing it right. And for every person who tells me that they stood on the correct side of the escalator because of my videos, I Take a little bit of pride in that.

03:47 – 04:09
Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I'll only laugh because I know exactly what you mean. I've been in so many times where I've gotten on the wrong side and you have to run all the way over because the train is coming over, but I know that could definitely be frustrating when that next train comes, but you're absolutely right. Those simple things that we take for granted. Sometimes you need to have that information. So again, it's great to have kind of like a resource that allows you to do that.

04:09 – 04:41
Rob Pitingolo

Absolutely, for sure. Yeah, and the podcast is great too, because it lets me, just like this podcast that we're doing now, it lets me have guests who bring their own unique perspectives and experiences. So for example, I'm not a restaurant expert. I don't eat at very many restaurants and people find that surprising, but you know, it's tough to eat at restaurants all the time. They're expensive and we've got lives. We've got stuff going on. So I've been able to bring in people, for example, who do eat at a lot of restaurants, restaurant editors, and food writers to talk about the best places to go. And to me, that's great because I get to share some expertise that I personally don't have.

04:41 – 05:06
Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's really like the beautiful thing about podcast YouTube channels, again, the opportunity to connect with people is that you don't have to know every single aspect, but sometimes you just need to know who to call or who to reach out to or what video to go to or podcast to listen to in that case. And you have people that really focus on that and really have tried, you know, all the different restaurants so you can just kind of lean on them for their expertise. Absolutely. Awesome, awesome, awesome. So now I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce and it can be for you personally or your business, but what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

05:13 – 05:56
Rob Pitingolo

Well, I think the reason why people sign up for tours with me specifically is because they get to know me. That's not something that you typically get when you're travelling to a new place. You look up tours in whatever city you're going to and you find a whole bunch of tour companies and options and all that. But it's very rare that you actually know who the tour guide is before you show up. And so that's 1 of the that was the secret sauce that really got this going and made it work initially. Now, of course, 1 person doesn't scale. I know a lot of your guests are 1 person operations. And so eventually I had to bring in a team and that was a challenge at the beginning, but I've really been able to start building some trust around my team so that people are now excited to go on tours with them as well, in addition to just me.

05:56 – 06:10
Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely, and definitely correct me if I'm wrong, kinda sounded like you said this before. You also, even I guess before somebody actually goes on a tour of the college, it sounds like you start to build that relationship through some of the mediums that you have, the podcast because you said they get to learn a little bit more about you.

06:10 – 06:37
Rob Pitingolo

Yeah, absolutely. I think there's always this debate in the business world about how many touches you need to make with a potential customer before they eventually buy from you. And I've heard everywhere from 7 to 30, who knows what the real number is, but you know, there's over a hundred videos on that YouTube channel. There are 20 podcast episodes right now. And so if people watch 20 videos or listen to 10 podcasts. That's a lot of time that they're spending with me and really building that relationship before they even get here.

06:37 – 06:50
Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely, and it just kind of shows your expertise and I think, again, that's a beautiful thing about this day and age is that we have the opportunity to kind of showcase our expertise, you know, and interview people and then of course, take people on tours, which is the fun thing to do, I'm sure.

06:50 – 06:51
Rob Pitingolo

Absolutely.

06:51 – 07:02
Gresham Harkless

Awesome, awesome, awesome. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

07:03 – 08:23
Rob Pitingolo

Well, the book that kind of launched this whole thing was the book Side Hustle by Chris Guillebeau because I did start it as a side hustle. I didn't just quit my job and jump into this. I really built it up in addition to my job. And it worked perfectly because my day job is a typical 9 to 5 office job and most people who come to Washington DC wanna take tours in the evenings. And so it worked out perfectly where I could work my job and then leave the office and go right out to the national mall, give them a tour. So it was really great to just have that idea that this can be a side hustle, it doesn't have to be something that you go all in on, and I was able to build it up slowly, but surely, and I'm really happy that I got going that way.

The other thing, you know, my, my CEO hack is to always think a little bit outside, you know, outside the box. And I, I know that is probably something that a lot of people say, but for me, you know, I think about SEO, you know, there are tons of tour companies in Washington D.C. And they're all fighting over the keywords Washington D.C. Tours, Washington D.C. Walking tours, and it's tough. I'm not going to say it's impossible, but it's tough, no doubt about it. And so I thought, well, maybe I can't crack Google, but I think I can crack YouTube because none of these companies are over there. And so I focused on SEO, but I focused on YouTube instead of on Google. And really that was the hack that really put me over the edge.

08:23 – 09:03
Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that makes so much sense. And I definitely appreciate you for breaking that down. For 1, I mean, even just from understanding, I think sometimes we get that we want to start a business or we might want to do this or take whatever step and we almost feel like we have to do it at a snap of a finger, but the process that it takes to do that and it's crazy that the schedule that you have perfectly aligned with the schedule that every that your target market had as well too. So you were able to kind of hit that very sweet spot. But I think that is remarkable and that you were able to scale that. But then too, like you said, I think when you get into your industry, you start to see that there's certain opportunities that you wanna be aware of so that you can kind of take advantage of that.

09:03 – 09:31
Rob Pitingolo

Yeah, and in many ways it's just lucky that the schedule's aligned that way. But I also knew that that was the case because I'd been a tour guide for 4 years prior to that and I knew that for the company I worked for, the most popular tour by far was the evening monuments tour. And so if I hadn't done that, I might have been thinking, oh, people wanna go in the morning or they wanna go at lunchtime. But because I already had that experience, I already knew what was gonna work. And so I'm very happy that I had that experience going in.

09:31 – 10:06
Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. And that's why a lot of people that start a business, they do have some type of interning or maybe working with a coach or a consultant or something so they can kind of elevate and get that expertise and that information so that they can shorten the learning curve, so to speak. So you're not doing morning tours for 6 months and then trying to figure out why it's not working as well as you would have hoped. You already have that kind of leg up on getting started. Yep. Awesome, awesome, awesome. So now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. So that could be like a word of wisdom or piece of advice or something you might tell your younger business self.

10:06 – 10:56
Rob Pitingolo

Yeah, 1 thing I would tell my younger business self is to think beyond me and what I mean by that is you know I built this company around me. I am the face of it. I'm in all the videos. I'm the host of the podcast. And so there's only 1 of me. And during some busy times of the year, like during the Cherry Blossom Festival in the spring, people book up my tours weeks in advance, and then people contact me and they say, hey, I wanna go on a tour with you, what can I do?

And I say, well, sorry, I'm already booked. But I've got this other great tour guide who you can go with and at the beginning, they would say, no, no thanks, not interested. And so that was really discouraging because I realized that there's only 1 of me and once I'm booked up, then that's kind of it. So I would tell my younger self to think forward, to think, to train people, to train potential customers, and to think beyond me as well.

10:56 – 11:28
Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that's definitely a huge nugget and it kind of just reminds me a lot of the E-Myth where you're really great at what it is that you do. So you have that business and you start the business, but a lot of people want to work with you. They want you to kind of have that hands on and there's only so much we can scale ourselves. We only have 24 hours in a day, as much as we have. So it definitely sounds like you've been able to do that as well, too. Have you found like there's certain, I guess things that you've done that have really helped you to be able to build that connection with other team members in addition to yourself?

11:28 – 12:21
Rob Pitingolo

Yeah. Well, one of the great things about the videos is that people can watch those before we start talking about having them give tours for me and they can decide, hey, this is something that I'm aligned with, that I'm on board with, or no, this isn't for me. And so it kind of makes it easier for people to decide whether they want to do this or not before they even get started. It's also good now I have a lot of reviews for some of my other tour guides and that's a big thing in this industry and you know when you're researching travel you're going to the reviews you're seeing what people are saying and the reviews are overwhelmingly positive now at the beginning every single review said hey my tour with Rob was great and I'm very happy very proud of those but I really needed some that said, hey, the other people are great too, and I finally have those. So when people are researching, they're saying, oh, it's not just Rob, it's these other people as well. And if I get a tour with them, I'm gonna be perfectly happy with it.

12:21 – 12:43
Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that makes so much sense. And do you find, if you, I know a lot of times, in building a great team and having people in place, you always wanna have complimentary people as well too? Do you find that you know as you said I'm not I don't know if 1 of your restaurant guys is like specifically focused on food but something along those lines where you have your strengths and they have their strengths and it kind of gives you that full complement of people that they can reach out to.

12:43 – 13:13
Rob Pitingolo

Yeah, haven't quite gotten all the way there yet. That's kind of the next step to use people's skills. Right now, we're all kind of just leading the same tour. It's just a monuments tour in DC, which is very popular, don't get me wrong. But it's also not really that unique, whereas like a food tour or a coffee tour things that people might be really good at leading and I've kind of had conversations about Doing that we haven't really branched into it yet But your idea is a very good one and I'm definitely working towards that.

13:13 – 13:34
Gresham Harkless

Awesome great great to hear and definitely, you know wait for it and I agree think that's definitely great You know that you are already thinking about that. You already had that seed planted, so that just means that it's gonna be sprouting sooner rather than later, so definitely appreciate that. And now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO, and we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So Rob, what does being a CEO mean to you?

13:34 – 14:10
Rob Pitingolo

It means making sure that every single customer gets exactly what they want and leaves happy and so As CEO I'm lucky this is still a small business I can have a personal interaction with every single customer, whether they go on tour with me or not, and I truly believe that that's 1 of the reasons why when you go and look at the reviews on TripAdvisor or Google, that they're so overwhelmingly positive. But to me, being CEO means being in charge of the customer experience and making sure that it's an excellent 1 and that they're all gonna leave happy and that they're gonna tell their friends that this is something that they need to do when they come to Washington, D.C.

14:10 – 14:33
Gresham Harkless

Absolutely, that makes so much sense and I think so many times we get lost in the sauce, I guess you can say, and we are not looking and reminding like why we do what we do to have that satisfaction from the customers and starting with 1 customer then 2 and so on so forth, it starts to build and it starts to grow but I think if we lose that focus no matter you know if we have a small business medium whatever size our business is and we lose kind of like the essence of why we started and what it is that we're doing.

14:35 – 14:35
Rob Pitingolo

Absolutely.

14:36 – 14:52
Gresham Harkless

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, Rob, truly appreciate that and I truly appreciate your time even more. What I want to do is patch the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional You can let our readers and listeners know and then of course how best they can subscribe to the YouTube Find your podcast and find out about all the awesome things you're working on

14:52 – 15:37
Rob Pitingolo

Yeah, I hope that anyone who's listening and wants to jump into this just just jumps in and just like me You don't have to quit your job. You don't have to spend a ton of money. You just pick up a few books and get some inspiration, listen to podcasts just like this 1, and then jump into it. If it doesn't work out, it's not the end of the world. I've certainly had some other ideas that didn't work out and it wasn't the end of the world. I hope that your listeners can take that and appreciate it like I did. For getting in touch, triphaxdc.com is the website, and of course, the YouTube channel is also called Trip Hacks DC, and so is the podcast. You can find that on the website or search in some of the podcast apps If you use 1 that you particularly like, otherwise we're also on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter as well.

15:37 – 16:21
Gresham Harkless

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, thank you so much again, Rob. We will definitely have those links and information in the show notes as well too to make it easier for everybody. But thank you again for that reminder as well too. I think so many times we get caught up in the try, try, try, and we don't actually do it. And understanding that sometimes the things that don't work out are part of the process. We all have things that didn't pan out as well as we would have hoped. But the difference is that we continue to take action. So I appreciate that reminder and appreciate you again too. I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:21 – 16:22
Rob Pitingolo

Of course you too.

16:22 – 16:59
Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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