Inspiring Conversations with Daniel Conley of Leadville ATV Tours/ Mountain Peaks Motel

Today we’d like to introduce you to Daniel Conley. 

Hi Daniel, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I used to have a construction company in Denver, my wife Ting, she worked for an asset management company. As much as we loved our work, end of the day, we wanted to be in the mountains. 

We’ve been looking for opportunities in the mountains for years, then the pandemic hit. We found a small motel in Leadville, CO. Because of the pandemic, a lot of investors are hesitant touching hospitality. The motel needed a ton of work, everything was outdated. We figured between Dan’s construction knowledge, skills, and connections, and Ting’s technology/finance background, we can turn the motel around. And that’s what we did. We quit our day jobs, invested every single penny we have in the motel, and gave it a try. It turned out to be great, our property ranked top 3 in Leadville, our Airbnb profile have over 660 reviews averaging over 4.9 stars. We had friends coming from all over the country to visit and help with the motel. It was such a pleasant experience taking this adventure along with our friends and seeing how successful it becomes. 

After we are done with the renovations at the motel, we decided to start running UTV tours. Both my wife are I are big OHV fans, and we love Leadville exactly for that reason. In Leadville, you can ride your OHV on county roads, meaning that there’s no trailer involved, you can ride any OHV from your front door! We love riding dirt bikes, snowmobiles, timberselds ourselves. And we want to show all the visitors how gorgeous mountains are even if they cannot hike 10 miles at 10,000ft. That’s where the UTV Tour idea started. We opened our doors 8/28/2021, with a bit over 5 months in business, we took over 5000 guests out in the mountains, everyone comes back with huge smile on their face! We have over 100 reviews in our google profile, and all are 5 stars! Sometimes we fell like we have the best job in the world, getting to meet new people and show everyone how awesome Colorado is! 

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Not everything is easy. Staffing in the mountains is a huge challenge and it’s not an isolated issue. We are lucky enough to meet lots of locals and have a great group of people working with us. From guides, mechanics, construction workers, electricians, and housekeeping, we do need a lot of help to keep everything running smoothly. Interesting enough, Ting is the one who had the hardest time finding housekeepers. We are paying great, but sometimes it’s just very hard to find good, reliable people, especially when it comes to cleaning, not as exciting as guiding UTV tours. But we got our hands dirty, when we are in transition, everyone cleaned rooms, that’s just what we have to do to keep business running. No housekeeping is not as exciting, but it’s one of the most crucial parts of our business. 

We also have had issues with some people in the community, considering not everyone are a fan of OHVs. The county is looking into put more guidelines regarding OHV use in Lake County, but we are lucky to have great lawyers, some members of the community’s support to go through this process with the county together. We understand that not everyone likes OHVs, we are trying to do our part by adjusting our route so we pass as little residential house as possible, when we see someone else on the trail, we try pass them very slowly, be courteous. End of the day, we believe everyone deserves to enjoy the trail as long as we treat it with respect. Everyone deserves to see how gorgeous Colorado mountains are even if they cannot hike 10 miles a day. And that’s what we are trying to provide to our guests. We show them how amazing mountains are and educate them how to recreate in a safe, responsible way. It’s unfortunate some people don’t like OHVs, they are really fun machines, end of the day, we can’t please everyone, but we are glad that most people are happy to see us fixing up an old motel, bringing jobs, economy to the community and show visitors a good time! 

Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Leadville ATV Tours/ Mountain Peaks Motel?
ATV: We are a new company established in Leadville that provide our guest-guided UTV tours! We take people into the mountains in UTVs, educate guests how to recreate safely and responsibly, enjoy the view, experience driving UTVs, take some great pictures, and have a great time! 

We are owned and operated all by local Leadville people, we provide top-of-the-line services and take people to some really gorgeous places in Colorado! We are not one of those company that you’ll never meet the owner, we are here every day working with our staff, talking to our guests, and get feedbacks on how can we do better! 

Motel: Newest renovated property in Leadville. We provide super clean rooms at a very affordable rate. We are basically just an Airbnb motel. We really don’t have walk-in business. We don’t even have a front desk everything is handled online. 

Do you have any memories from childhood that you can share with us?
Dan: Hearing the ice cream truck. Ting: Walking to the corner store in China and buying sweets. (Ting still goes to corner store buying sweets… just in Leadville now…) 

We both worked hard in our early ages, we have to work hard for everything we have today. We wish we grew up in wealthy families that would come to Aspen for ski trips every year. But honestly, we just spent lots of time work, study, go through college, go to grad school, start a job, start a company… like everyone else. Sometimes I feel like we love having so much fun (skiing, skydiving, snowboarding, snowmobiling, dirt biking, off-roading, hiking, camping, and the list goes on…) and decided to make it part of our career is because of we are overcompensating of all the fun time we missed at childhood. But who cares, we are having fun now, we are showing our guests a great time, and we are successful with our businesses. We are at this point in our life because of all the hard work we put in at an earlier age, end of the day, it all works out great. I can’t imagine a better life than this. 

Pricing:

• $285 UTV Tours
• Motel rooms under $100 (Varies by day based on machine learning algorithms, yeeey technology!)

Contact Info:

• Email: leadvilleatvtours@gmail.com
• Website: https://leadvilleatvtours.com/ and https://mountainpeaksmotel.guestybookings.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leadville_utv_tours/?hl=en and https://www.instagram.com/mountain_peaks_leadville_co/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LeadvilleUTVTours and https://www.facebook.com/mountainpeaksmotel

Image Credits
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