Meet Austin Shrader of Colorado Tour Co. in Highland

Today we’d like to introduce you to Austin Shrader.

Austin, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I started working when I was 12 and my first job was a paper route. At 14 I started working for Hardee’s, 15 was Taco Bell and for the next 15 years, I worked in food service and hospitality combined with gigs roofing houses, landscaping, screen printing and commercial painting. My food service experience includes most fast-food restaurants, all the pizza places, catering, prep cook, omelet cook, barista, server, bartender, potato peeler and burrito roller.

I’ve always been into fashion and “streetwear” and in 2005 I learned to screenprint t-shirts. I managed a screen print studio before opening my own small custom t-shirt shop where I would teach people how to print and then sell their tees inside for a full 360 experience.

Having grown up in a small western Kansas town watching planes fly overhead, I knew there was a bigger more diverse world beyond the borders of Great Bend so I moved to Hawaii in 1999, and lived there for a year. In the early 2000’s I traveled on my own to Brazil, Costa Rica, Panama and Peru. In 2007 I had my first daughter Ofelia, and my wife and I traveled to Mumbai India, the birthplace of her father and stayed for a month. After these trips, I knew I wanted to work in tourism for the rest of my life.

I enrolled in the Community College of Denver in 2010, had my second daughter Beatrice in 2012 and graduated from Metropolitan State University of Denver in 2015 with a degree in Tourism Management and minor degrees in Marketing and Digital Media.

I got my start as a tour guide doing the New Student Orientation tours while I was a student on the Auraria Campus. After graduation, I started volunteering at the Colorado State Capitol doing tours of the building. In 2016 I got a gig with My420Tours as a cannabis tour guide. I never felt completely comfortable having stoned guests pass out in the hot and humid flowering rooms so I left that company. I found work driving 14 people at a time to places like Rocky Mountain National Park, Mt. Evans and Pikes Peak. The company also did guide hikes around Red Rocks and the foothills, brewery tours and city walking tours.

After a year and a half, I felt burned out and knew I wanted to continue guiding tours but not wanting to drive. I started freelancing and have done step-on guiding for some of the biggest travel companies in the world like Tauck Tours and Amtrack in addition to being able to fill in for local companies who need a guide when they find themselves in a pinch. In December 2018, I launched my own business Colorado Tour Co. and started doing city walking tours on the Air BnB Experiences platform. In April 2019, I started leading food tours for a local company called Delicious Denver and 2020 holds the possibility of guiding student tours to places like the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone.

Has it been a smooth road?
The road has definitely not been a smooth one. Foodservice is one of the most grueling, labor-intensive, underpaid and thankless industries in America. I kick myself sometimes because I grew up thinking that if I worked hard and didn’t complain it would pay off. The payoff never came and I realized that I could be replaced in an instant by someone younger and less talented. I started to fear that I would always be on the bottom of the totem pole and that is when I decided to go to school. All the odds were against me getting a degree. Low-income, minority, children, male, no financial support and having to work to pay the bills while enrolled. Despite these factors, I excelled, graduated top of my hospitality class, completed 165 credits, earned three degrees and received grants and scholarships to graduate with only 7000$ of debt which was paid off within a year and a half after graduation.

Although I was flying high in December of 2015, I came crashing down in 2016. I was sending out my new resume and being invited to interview only to be told that I was not who they were looking for or that I didn’t qualify. I continued serving tables feeling less confident every day. Although it didn’t pay, I applied for a volunteer tour guide position at the State Capitol because I wanted to guide tours even if it meant no money. I didn’t know at the time but this was the best thing that could happen.

I started leading tours of the capitol for groups of 30, kids to grandparents. The history I learned gave me a new confidence and my delivery got steadily better. After my first season, I started to receive compliments on my guiding from people who had taken tours all over the world. My time as a cannabis guide sharpened my skills for handling problems as they come up. From people passing out, wheels snapping off the bus, breakdowns and reroutes, I was learning to think on my feet. These experiences led to being the highest reviewed guide for the company taking people into the mountains. My confidence was building but there were underlying management issues that were negatively affecting the company and the guides. After a year and a half, I took everything I had learned and decided to strike out on my own. When I started Colorado Tour Co. in December 2018, it was exciting but it was also the worst time to start a new tour business in Colorado. Our industry numbers dip in the state after the holidays through February when it is cold and dark.

I started bleeding the cash I had saved and started suffering a mental breakdown wondering what I had done and what I was going to do. One tour and one person at a time started to trickle in and I would use the small amounts of incoming cash to pay my bills. Slowly, my reviews started to grow and my tours got more consistent and my confidence started to grow but I was struggling to pay the bills and keep food on the table. Although I was finally operating my own business and doing my own tours there was a fear that I would have to find another job to support the family. I hit another emotional low when I started applying for dishwasher positions paying 12$ an hour.

Late one night in March 2019, I was scrolling through Craigslist feeling defeated and came across a food tour company in need of a food tour guide. I applied, got hired and now I do my own tours of the city in the morning, food tours in the afternoon freelance and step-on guide on rare days off. 2019 had me feeling the lowest lows and the highest highs of my life. In 2020, I am shooting for bigger tour opportunities and growing my small tour business by adding new tours which I will keep under wraps for now.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Colorado Tour Co. story. Tell us more about your work.
Colorado Tour Co. specializes in small group tours of Denver and the front range of Colorado. We are known for the best customer service and experience in the industry. I am most proud of overcoming my fears in order to start this business and the growing confidence and strategy to stay in business. We are also very proud of the feedback we receive from customers. Our intense focus on customer service and the customer experience is what sets us apart from the competition. From the time the customer books a tour, through the experience and completion of the tour, we take every step very seriously to provide the customer with the best tour experience many have ever had. The proof is in our reviews.

How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
The next 5-10 years will see major growth in the tourism industry, especially in the metro areas. Colorado has a long history of mountain tourism, skiing, hiking, cabins by the lake, fishing and snowmobiling, etc. In the last five years, Denver has experienced massive growth in boutique city tours. Food, craft beer, scooters, photography, cannabis and street art tours have become the norm and many companies have popped up in response to the increasing demand. Five years ago none of these companies existed and five years from now more companies will be on the scene. Air BnB and Air BnB Experiences have also changed the game and the tourism industry. No longer do you have to stay in an overpriced hotel and accept the paid promotional options dispensed by the concierge.

The tour and experience industry is now offering cooking classes, pottery making, custom hike, alpaca and donkey experiences. Tourism control has shifted away from a handful of big multinational brands into the hands of ordinary people with something unique to offer. The option to take a street art tour with a local artist or a cooking class from a local chef makes for a more intimate experience than some prepackaged offering. As more and more people find the barriers lowered and make their way into the boutique tour industry, it will be very important to stay on top of new trends and changing tastes of customers. Luckily there is more information than ever available to independent tour operators about customers and their tour habits. Innovation and customer service is the game I will be playing for the next five years.

Pricing:

• Tour prices between 35$ and 500$ a day

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.airbnb.com/experiences/424995
• Phone: 7203777475
• Email: austinleeshrader@gmail.com

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