Starting a Six-Figure Food Tour Company | Christine Hughey

Today's episode features Christine Hughey who owns A Little Local Flavor food tour business. Christine navigated several cities and years to land her dream job in Nashville. Then shortly after, Christine would be celebrating a new marriage and devastated by their household income dropping from $120k to $35k. At the bottom, she took a challenge to start her own business and in no time had created a six-figure food tour company that is growing at leaps and bounds. Listen, learn, and let us know what you think about Christine's amazing turnaround. Episode Summary Christine's background She feels like she had a better than average financial understanding growing up Christine would go visit who are Grandmother who tasked them with tracking stock prices Her Grandmother would also buy them small stocks in companies they understood It gave them something to chat about over their times apart Christine admits that she took all those lessons for granted until much later When it was time to go to college, Christine wanted to get into the print industry This ended up requiring her to get an engineering degree at the college she was at From there she moved to Colorado and got a job she did not enjoy Journey Towards FI In 2006 she is making around $35k per year and saving around $200 per month She also realized a true engineering job wasn't going to be there for her in Denver From there she moved to a small town in Texas for a few years Then her dream job opened up in Nashville, TN Things Begin to Fall Apart We're now entering 2013 on the journey and Christine is hitting her groove Until she is shocked to find out that she'll be losing that dream job quickly after starting Leading up to this, they had tried to push more and more work on her with no increased pay Christine's husband helped her through this down period Then she got a new contract for a dream job as an engineer and things were looking up Then six weeks after their honeymoon, that new contract got pulled and she was unemployed On top of this, her husband lost his largest income-generating gig Six weeks after their honeymoon they saw their pay get cut from $120k to $35k They started cutting all expenses and downsizing their house Christine admits that the whole experience was crushing She vowed to never let one company be the source of her income The turnaround Christine finally finds work at a food tour company in Nashville The hours are long and the pay had gotten cut in half Then January 2018 happened and her life completely changed This was when she attended her first financial independence event Christine attended CampFI down in Florida At the conference, she was challenged to start her own food tour company When she got home, she quit her job and started her own business that May This was the start of A Little Local Flavor Building a Six-Figure Business Christine admits she was out of her comfort zone What got her through was just taking one small step every day Most of her education came from podcasts It took some time for her to shed being an engineer as her identity As she built her team she had several keys she wanted to hit Some things she wanted was to fair pay, have strong values, and a good work environment She then layers in lots of bonuses into her employees' pay This small step really incentivizes them to do great work By the end of 2018, they had over $60k in sales But then 2019 grew like crazy She grew her team to include 8 employees They also saw the number of visitors grow to 4400 and sales to $330k With that, they took home 23% as profit Christine expects to grow that margin and increase tour types and locations Her 2020 goal is $500k for the company She also hopes to be able to scale back her involvement   Key Takeaways Social Currency: Christine talks about how to put ou...