Kim Giovacco founded her first vegan travel company, Veg Jaunts and Journeys, in 2016 and is now cofounder of the Ahimsa Travel Club. She recently spoke with me about the inspiration behind her first company and what her travelers can expect from the merger with Prachi Jain’s company, Escape To. Giovacco also discussed her expectations for the Ahimsa Travel Club’s future and her advice for those wishing to start their own companies. Below is our interview.

This post’s featured image is of Kim Giovacco in Florence.

Dynestee Fields: Before founding Veg Jaunts and Journeys, your original vegan travel company, in 2016, what had been your experience with traveling as a vegan, and were there any moments that stood out?

Kim Giovacco: Well, the thing is, I pretty much started the company right around the time that I became vegan.

It was, I think, only a few months later, but I had been traveling as a vegetarian for 30 years, and I didn’t find that very difficult.

But I never went on a group tour because I knew that there would probably be some activities that exploited animals, and I didn’t want to be at a restaurant with a group of people, and they would say, “Oh, here’s the one vegetarian option,” and it would just be a pasta dish and just the same thing all the time. 

I actually was trying to go vegan for 5 years. I didn’t know any vegans, and I found it a little bit difficult, and I always thought, “Well, I can just try to be vegan at home because I think it’s going to be very difficult when I travel.”

So a friend of mine had gone vegan overnight, and then she invited me to this vegan meetup. Then the people in that group were so helpful and told me about so many resources, and obviously, they wanted to see me become a vegan.

Then it only took me 3 weeks after trying on my own for 5 years. So, I pretty much started the company right after that. It did seem like a bit of a challenge, but it also seemed like so much fun discovering all these vegan places around the world, and getting to go to them, and finding people to help with the tours and things like that.

DF: So, were you already kind of looking into places that were vegan around the world because you were vegetarian, or did you have to start?

KG: Yeah, I would say that the tours started with going to vegan-friendly destinations, especially if I already had experience in that place.

Now, if I don’t have experience in a place, then I will work with someone there. I think so far, they [the people there] have all been vegan.

So, for instance, I wanted to bring a group to Greece. But I’ve never been there, and then I heard about a Greek man that has his own travel company, and he’s vegan. So we’re working together on the tour. He put together the whole itinerary, and I basically just have to find the people to bring onto the tour. So that’s happening for the first time next year, and the same thing happened with Namibia in Africa.

That is not a vegan-friendly place at all, but it’s a fabulous place to go on a safari. So this vegan couple in Namibia, they found me, and they said, “You know, we have this tour company, and we can put this safari itinerary together, and if we go to a location where there’s not a lot of vegan choices”—the wife of the couple, she was certified in vegan cooking—they would just cook all the food on the spot for us. It was fabulous, and I could never have done that tour without them because when we went to the occasional restaurant it was not a very vegan-friendly place.

Giovacco and a group of her travelers in Namibia

DF: Fascinating. So, I’m trying to just figure out the timeline. So, you went vegan in 3 weeks, and then you started a travel company. So you already knew these people who were around the world who had these locations?

KG: No. That all came gradually once I became known. So, I started with cities that are very vegan-friendly. The very first tour was just a weekend tour. I was living in Boston then, and the tour just went to New York. Then the first big tour I did was to Berlin, which is one of the world vegan capitals.

Giovacco and a group of her travelers in Berlin

And then I did a tour in Italy and Portugal because those are both vegan-friendly. They’re not the best in the world, but they have a lot of options. So, it started out like that with the obvious vegan-friendly places. Then, as my company got known, other vegans around the world started contacting me. I mean, this was definitely over a few years, and it was mostly during COVID or after COVID that they found me. Then we worked on putting something together in their location.

DF: Excellent! Thank you for providing those details.

So what exactly prompted you to found a vegan-focused travel company? Was it that you went vegan, and you thought that perhaps other people might like a similar experience? Was there a particular instance when the idea manifested?

KG: Yes. At that time, and this was in Massachusetts, I was on the board of getting a food co-op started. Do you know what those are? It’s like you own a grocery store with your community, right? The grocery store is not owned by a corporation. It’s owned by its members.

But it takes a long time to get them started. It could be up to 10 years. So I was on the board for 3 years, and food co-ops are normally very vegan-friendly.

I was just traveling a lot in the U.S. because it’s just my hobby. So, whenever I would go to another city, I would visit the food co-op if there was one there. I loved visiting them. They’re all very different. They’re all very community-oriented. Sometimes they’re huge. Sometimes they’re very small. 

So while I was on the board of the food co-op that year for my birthday, my partner at the time arranged this 3 day trip over a weekend in New England where there’s a lot of food co-ops. So we were going to see new places, but we were also going to visit 12 food co-ops in one weekend, and that was in Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire.

After she gave me the card about what this experience was, I was in the shower. It just came to me, “Oh, I could do this for vegans. The way she planned a tour visiting food co-ops, I can plan a tour for vegans” [Laughs].

I was never so passionate about something, and within one week, I had the name. I had the website domain. I mean, I still had my full-time job, but I was just spending every extra minute on getting this going.

DF: Wow, that’s fascinating. That was a brilliant realization to have. 

KG: Basically, I just combined my two passions, which were veganism, even though I was still a new vegan, and travel. So, basically, my hobby turned into my career. It couldn’t have been a better situation.

DF: That’s wonderful. Throughout the interviews that I’ve done, I’ve also interviewed Austin Simmons from Vegan Outreach. He was telling me, too, that you have to combine veganism with whatever your passion is, so yours is a brilliant example of that.

KG: I wish everybody could do it. It would be so great.

DF: What specific elements distinguish vegan travel companies from typical travel companies?

KG: Well, there’s absolutely no animal exploitation. So we are not doing things, like, taking a horse-drawn carriage ride or going to a so-called sanctuary in Thailand that is not an elephant sanctuary. That is not a sanctuary at all. The animals are being used for entertainment.

This is not 100%, but I really try to book [vegan hotels]. There are lots of vegan hotels in the world now. Unfortunately, they are often in places that are a little bit hard to get to or that don’t have a lot of activities around them, especially not for multiple days.

So, it’s a little hard to support them using a group because they’re usually in the countryside, but I think that they’re a fabulous thing because they would be 100% vegan inside.

When I’m choosing hotels, I really try to avoid there being [animal products inside]. I wouldn’t book a hotel that had leather in the room. Like, that had a leather headboard or a leather chair in the room. Sometimes it might have a leather chair in the lobby, but luckily, my guests are understandable. They’re understanding. They know that we’re not living in a 100% vegan world.

So we try our very best, and it usually works to have a vegan breakfast available for them, or at least options on the buffet because hotels are very much lacking, for the most part, with vegan breakfast options.

And what else? Well, just traveling with like-minded people. I mean, you don’t have to be vegan to come on my tours, but most people are, or they’re at least vegetarian. Usually the only reason they’re not is if they come with a friend or a spouse.

The sense of camaraderie is just terrific, and it serves as a really good event for people that don’t know any vegans where they live.

Where I live in Greenville, literally every one of my friends, everybody I know here, is vegan. At this moment in time, I do not have a nonvegan friend, and I feel like I’m living in a bubble. I just feel so fortunate. It makes things so much easier. 

But lots of my travelers that come from the Midwest or something, they might not know another vegan. So they like being surrounded by like-minded people, and there’s lots of exchanging of information, like, which products are good and which recipe sites to follow. So, that’s been the most satisfying thing.

The thing I’m most proud of is that [community building] and the fact that 60% of my bookings are repeat customers. So, I have a good number of people that are spending all their vacation time on my tours. They’re coming on three or four tours a year.

Now, so many of them have become friends, and they want to go on the same tours together. So, I feel like something really special has been created.

DF: Wow! That’s a great community that you’ve fostered.

KG: I’m not sure that that would happen with a mainstream travel company.

DF: Yeah. Because I imagine that a lot of different types of people would come on those.

KG: Yeah.

DF: Why should vegans and those curious about veganism travel with a company as opposed to traveling solo?

KG: Well, for the sense of community. Then also it’s very time-consuming to plan an itinerary

where you know that vegan food will be available. Because lots of times, vegan restaurants are not located near the center of the city or near major attractions. They might be more in the residential neighborhoods.

For example, there could be a half-day tour or a full-day tour that includes a meal, and in most cases, the meal is not going to be vegan. So, I would make sure that a special meal was arranged for everybody, or if the provider couldn’t do that, then I would make sure we’re just bringing our own bagged lunches.

Just in terms of general groups, sometimes there are activities that someone wouldn’t provide just for one person. Say it was some kind of a cooking class. You know, we might contact someone and say, “Oh, could you provide this vegan cooking class?”

It wouldn’t be worth their while to do it for just one or two people. But once there’s a group of people, it becomes very attractive to them. So sometimes just having more clout as a group, and also as a form of subtle activism. Especially if it’s a hotel, say, and I tell them, “Well, I have 12 vegans staying at your hotel for 5 nights. Do you think that you can provide some vegan options for breakfast,” and if they keep getting those requests then hopefully they will make some changes. 

It’s nice because some hotels are very happy to do it; they consider it a challenge. Every once in a while, they’re not very helpful. They don’t really have an interest, but lately that’s becoming less common. So then I’ll have to bring some food in or supplement it. 

In general, it’s been good, and I tend to use, in certain locations, the same hotel every year. So now it’s very easy because they’ve been providing vegan food for us for 5 years. So we don’t have to start from scratch.

So if it was just one or two people going into a big hotel and asking for vegan food, they might not get it.

DF: That’s a really good reason to travel with a group then. I never thought about the economic dimension of that.

KG: Yeah. One thing that I didn’t mention—say you were in Italy in Florence. Florence is technically in Tuscany, but Florence is a city; it’s not the countryside. So if you wanted to see the countryside when you were there, it would be very expensive to have a private tour for just one or two people. It could be $800 for the day, you know?

Or that person would have to join a mainstream tour. Then they’re gonna go somewhere, and there might not be a vegan lunch option, you know? But if we have 10 people going together, then we can have our own private tour. It just brings the cost per person way down.

DF: Wow. There are a lot of good reasons to travel as a group then.

KG: Definitely. And you have somebody to hang out with during free time.

      Giovacco and a group of her travelers in Singapore

DF: So the community aspect?

KG: For sure. 

DF: What principles guided the creation of Veg Jaunts and Journeys?

KG: Well, I’m vegan for the animals. So that is definitely an important part for me. I give 5% of my profits to various animal sanctuaries. I try to spread it out through larger sanctuaries, smaller sanctuaries. Ones that are all over the U.S.

This is not always possible, but we try to visit animal sanctuaries if there is one in the location where we’re going. That’s not always possible. But in the near future, I’m going to do a few different ones [tours] that the main thing is just visiting animal sanctuaries and eating at vegan restaurants. So, there’s a lot of sanctuaries in North Carolina, and there’s a lot in the Catskill Mountains areas of New York State. So people have said that they would be really interested in doing something like that.

For me, the main focus [is to] try to be a sustainable company. So we’re not ever using large buses. Our tours are very casual; when we’re in cities, we’re using public transportation all the time and walking. Then the only time we might have some kind of vehicle at our disposal is if, like, we’re doing a day trip outside of the city.

Everyone gets a transit pass on our tours, and I run a paperless office; so just everything is digital. They get the final itinerary a month before the tour, and they can either use it as an app or I email them the PDF. They can print out the PDF on their own, but I tell them there’s not gonna be any paper copies on-site.

Everybody’s been absolutely fine with that.

DF: So what are some of the sanctuaries that you guys donate to through the company?

KG: I do a recurring donation to Animal Haven of Asheville. They’ve been around for 25 years.

I’ve made a lot of donations to Changing Hearts, which is in Boiling Springs, NC; one in northern Georgia that’s called Farm of the Free; Piedmont Farm Animal Rescue, which is in the Triangle area; Lancaster Farm Sanctuary in Pennsylvania. So just wherever I can. Oftentimes it’s ones that I’ve personally visited and have experience with, and other times it might just be a one-off if they’re desperately trying to raise money. 

Oh, the most exciting one. Visiting for the first time on Saturday, I only recently heard about it. It’s called Wild Pines, and it’s in Union, SC. They’re having their annual fundraiser with all kinds of activities and vendors on Saturday. I would have gone anyway, but it turns out that the Speak for Animals organization that I’m a board member on, they’re gonna have a table there. So I’ll be manning the table in the afternoon.

DF: So you said that your tourists are open to traveling to these.

KG: Yeah. We definitely include sanctuaries if there is one where we’re visiting. But it’s not always possible. Sometimes they can be too far out. Like, it’s too difficult to get to them.

I’ve brought many, many people to Animal Haven in Asheville, and next year, there’s a sanctuary that’s been around for a long time, outside of Pisa, Italy. We’ll be going to that one because these sanctuaries are normally 100% vegan organizations.

Oh, another really good one. We spent the whole day there. It’s called Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, and it’s in Utah. It’s mostly dogs and cats, but now they have some farm animals as well. It’s huge. It’s tens of thousands of acres. They even have a motel now that you can stay in, and you can have lunch there. They have a $5 vegan lunch for their volunteers, but then also it’s open to the public. Everybody loved going there, so I feel like I need to bring a group back there again sometime.

DF: Nice! These sound like amazing places.

KG: Yeah, and sometimes they’re in really nice locations. Really pretty locations.

DF: I imagine so. Especially if they have farm animals; they want to have pasture land. 

KG: Yep.

DF: So, Veg Jaunts and Journeys recently merged with Escape To, founded by Prachi Jain, to form the Ahimsa Travel Club. When did you two meet, and how did the idea emerge of combining your two companies?

KG: The funny thing is, we have yet to meet in person.

We’ve known about each other for 8 years.

I’m not sure how I first heard about her. Possibly in 2017, when I exhibited at the Boston Vegetarian Festival.

She might have had a table there, too, but I didn’t meet her in person. I might have just seen her brochures or something. Then, kind of the sad thing was, we were both living in the Boston area at the same time. But I was getting ready to move to North Carolina. So we never got to meet before I moved. 

She’s been doing tours to Mexico City for a long time, and Mexico City was on my list for quite a while. I didn’t feel confident tackling that on my own because it’s just a huge city. Last year, in February, I joined her Mexico City tour, which was the first time I ever joined a group tour that wasn’t my own.

I put on my Facebook page, “Oh, I’m going on Escape To’s Mexico City tour. Does anybody want to go?” Three of my clients came.

Another client who I’m not Facebook friends with, she was there as well. So I didn’t know until I showed up, or until we had the orientation call, that she was also going to be there. So there were basically five of us that were clients of mine and that are now clients of Prachi’s. 

I kind of wanted to see how another company ran things, and I thought that the tour was really well organized, but Prachi wasn’t leading it because she’s done that tour so many times now that she can hand it off to other qualified people.

So then—actually, earlier this year, in the winter, in the spring—I wanted to sell my company. I’m not really tired of all the travel, but I’m a bit tired of being away so much, and I feel like I don’t have any time anymore for personal travel or to research new places. So, I thought about selling it, and I had some serious interest from a few people, but then Prachi contacted me.

She said, “What would you think about if we joined forces?” She said, “You’re the only vegan company I would consider doing that with,” and I felt the same way about her. 

I was starting to get a little apprehensive about just world politics and natural disasters and lots of things that weren’t in my control, and what if something bad happened when I’m leading a tour? I felt like if I could share those responsibilities with someone, that it would just make it a lot easier.

So we had several phone calls and decided that we’re just a really good match, and I would say our clients are pretty similar. But, surprisingly, we didn’t have a lot of overlap among our clients because I was mostly doing tours to Europe, and she was mostly doing India and Mexico, and she was wanting to expand to Europe. So it was really perfect for her that I already had so many tours in place.

I’m 62, and she’s only 40. So I think she has a lot of energy and ideas.

I think when we first talked about this, since she knew that I wanted to sell my company, she thought that I would maybe only stay on for a year or two. But I told her, “No. If we’re sharing responsibilities and doing this together, I feel like I can still go for another 5 years,” and she was thrilled to hear that I wanted to stay on for that long.

So yeah. It’s just really exciting because I think that we can do a lot of bigger and better things together.

DF: So has the merger already taken place? 

KG: No. It’ll take about a year, so we’re just starting by—for instance, we just put one of her Mexico City tours on my website. It says in the description that it’s Prachi’s tour, she’s done this so many times, I have complete faith in her, and I’m basically getting the guests and filling the tour. But she’ll be running it. 

And then, she’s gonna put a few of my tours that aren’t sold out yet on her website. We’ll see if any of her clients are interested in going on my tours. I think in 2027, it will be finalized. We hope. 

My website will disappear, and the Veg Jaunts and Journeys name will disappear, and then it will just be Ahimsa Travel Club.

DF: Wonderful. I’m glad those details were clarified because I was wondering. I was trying to figure out the timeline.

KG: Yeah.

DF Was there anything else you were going to add?

KG: Nope.

DF: So how do your and Prachi’s approaches to vegan travel complement each other? You just spoke a little about that. Can you elaborate?

KG: Yeah. We’re both very much into promoting other vegans in the travel space, so people that might be doing things on a much smaller scale than us. So they might just be having a food tour in a city. 

We were just speaking before this interview started. So on the new website, we’ll have a section called “Community,” and we will highlight other vegan companies or other vegan travel companies every month and also try to work with them as much as we can. 

That’s another big goal of my business, and I think of hers for sure as well: supporting as many local vegan businesses as we can and just helping them thrive. She does that even more than me because she’s doing a lot with very local, say very small, businesses that might be owned by women, like, maybe it’s a soap maker or something like that.

Sometimes her tours, in the past, have had a volunteering component to them. So I think that it would be good for my tours to have a bit more of that component and that I could learn a lot from her. 

But, I think our philosophies are pretty similar and kind of slower travel and not rushing through places.

DF: How, if at all, will the Ahimsa Travel Club differ from Veg Jaunts and Journeys?

KG: It’s just gonna be bigger, which is really exciting. 

One thing that differentiates me, but we’re going to carry it over to Ahimsa, is my prices are based on people having their own rooms, which is very unusual. Almost every other tour company out there, you have to share a room with someone. Or you have to pay extra money to have your own room. So I told Prachi that my clients really appreciate that aspect, and she agreed that we can carry that forward to Ahimsa.

So I’m really happy about that because, of course, with my clients, one of the first things they asked when they heard about the merger was, “Will we still be having our own rooms?”

They [the clients] are getting younger now, but when I first started, they were definitely over 60, over 50. Now we’re getting a lot more people in their 30s and 40s and even 20s. But for sure, my older clients don’t like to share rooms. So, they were happy to know that we’re keeping that.

DF: That’s a really nice detail to have: that with you guys, the rooms will be single.

KG: Yep. Yep. But still plenty of time to get to know new people and make new friends and stuff.

We’re gonna have a webinar on Sunday, so people can come and ask questions. Then from that, we want to make a focus group and just really ask our clients what they want and what they’re looking for in tours.

What places do they want to go to? Are they interested in shorter tours that might just be 3 days in a city or something? Are they interested in retreats? We just have so many ideas, and, pretty much both of us have just been doing these multiday tours for the most part. But, if we see that there’s an interest for other things, we definitely want to try to provide that.

DF: Excellent! So what goes into preparing a trip, both logistically and in terms of ensuring its alignment with vegan values? 

You already spoke about the hotels and what your principles are, so what are the logistics of this? I know Prachi said that you were someone who went ahead and scouted out an area before you did a tour, so it seems like you’re really good at planning each little detail.

KG: Yeah. Sometimes I scout. Sometimes I don’t need to if I’ve already been there. Like I said, if I don’t have any experience there, then I work with someone that lives there. We just customize it. So the first thing is choosing the hotels.

No. Really the first thing is deciding how many days it should be and seeing what activities are there. Probably the activities come first. Then see how many days you should be there. Then, if you’re going to more than one place, how easy or difficult it is to get from one city to the next. And how long it takes. And then, choose the hotels.

And then, start finding local people to work with that could do, like, a walking tour or a cooking class. My first instinct will always be to contact the vegan people that I might know of in that area and see what they’re offering, but obviously not every single person we’re working with is vegan. So oftentimes, we’ll have a walking tour by somebody who’s not vegan. But sometimes it’s a very nice surprise, and you just find out that they are.

So we were in Edinburgh, Scotland, and we had this guide. Then all of a sudden, he’s just like, “Oh, I see a lot of vegan t-shirts in this group. I’m vegan.” So that was a really nice surprise. I had no idea.

So then there’s a general outline of what we’re going to do and how we’re going to get around and everything, and then [we] start making all those reservations. I like to have my tours up on the website a year ahead of time, and I always have people that will book a year or more in advance. Then there’s lots of people that are kind of just a few months ahead of time.

Then, formally booking all those different tours, and train tickets, and bus tickets, and making the hotel reservations.

Things like the restaurants can’t really be done until maybe 6 weeks ahead of time because places are always opening and closing. So about 6 weeks ahead, I’ll choose the places I would like to go. Then the actual restaurant reservations will normally only take them 3 to 4 weeks ahead of time. So by the time all that is done, there’s usually, like, minimum 75 reservations for each tour, between the hotels and all the different tickets, and the restaurant reservations. 

So it’s a lot of detailed work, and it’s very easy to make a mistake. I can’t do it if I’m tired or anything like that. I have to be really fresh.

After you do the skeleton, you have to get everything up on the website and let people know, in general, what we’ll be doing. I have a platform that’s for travel agents and tour operators where each tour has its own itinerary. That’s what I use to keep track of everything: who’s going on the tour and just a daily itinerary. That’s a working document for a year, basically. Then 3 to 4 weeks before the tour, that’s what’s sent to the client, either in digital or PDF form.

DF: So you said the document contained the clients and the tour operators?

KG: So it would have everybody who’s going on the tour, the hotels, everything. Everything we’re going to be doing, the exact trains that we’re taking, and all the restaurants.

DF: Excellent! I’m sure you have to be super detailed with that.

Has there been a trip you specifically enjoyed preparing for above the others, and why did it stand out?

KG: I really liked the tour I just did in the spring, to the Netherlands and Belgium. It was a lot of work because we were visiting a lot of smaller towns and taking a lot of day trips. So that one really had a lot of reservations. But it was fun finding different vegan shops and vegan restaurants and people that were giving vegan food tours, and we really got to see a lot of different places, rather than just being in one big city for 5 days or for a week. 

We probably visited, like, a dozen smaller towns. They were all very vegan-friendly. I had 12 tours this year, and that tour was the first one to sell out, which I was kind of surprised about. But it told me that people are not necessarily interested in the really blockbuster places, that they want to have some other ideas of places to visit.

When we got to those two countries [the Netherlands and Belgium], I would tell the restaurants, like, “Oh, this is the first vegan tour in the Netherlands and Belgium.” They were just so excited and so happy to welcome us.

DF: That is very exciting! I can’t believe that was the first! You had an excellent experience there.

KG: Yeah. We’ll definitely have to do it again because a lot of people saw the photos and then they were interested.

DF: What do you ultimately want to see travelers take away from these trips?

KG: Ultimately, a sense of community and to feel like they’re supporting other vegan businesses around the world and that they got their money’s worth and that it was a good value.

DF: Perfect. Has there been any traveler feedback that’s surprised you or taught you something new about vegan travel?

KG: Well, I think when Americans go to Europe they’re surprised at how vegan-friendly it is there. How much more vegan-friendly it can be than the U.S., especially in certain areas. 

But there’s always funny things just with people in general. Like, I do a survey at the end. I say, “Well, what was your favorite activity?” “The cooking class.”

Then the next person, “What was your least favorite activity?” “The cooking class.” 

So you can’t please everybody 100%, you know? “How was the amount of free time?” “Too much.”

“How was the amount of free time?”  “Too little.”

But in general, everybody is in agreement on everything. So it’s good.

DF: Okay. Where do you hope to see the Ahimsa Travel Club in 5 to 10 years?

KG: Oh, I hope it’s the biggest vegan travel company in the world; I think it will be. And that we have even more clients than we do now because there’s still a very big, untapped market. Since I’m mostly doing tours to Europe, I don’t really have European guests. But we hope to get European guests going to South America and Asia.

So we haven’t even really started on that yet. 

I hope we’re just offering a lot more destinations because I have so many repeat clients. They’re always looking for new places to go.

DF: How close are you all to reaching that goal? Because I know you haven’t merged yet, but are you already near the top of the list with the largest in the world?

KG: I definitely think so, and we now have tours on all continents except Australia and Antarctica.

DF: Do you foresee a trip to Antarctica?

KG: It is possible now because there is one boat that can provide vegan options. I know I personally couldn’t do it because I know it’s really rough sailing for some of it. But I do think some people would be interested, and Prachi and I now have a lot of people helping us lead tours. So anything is possible.

DF: Excellent. Are there any questions that I should have asked but didn’t?

KG: No. You did a fabulous job.

DF: Thank you so much!

KG: I’ll say one thing. This doesn’t really have to do with veganism. But if somebody wants to start their own business, I would highly recommend that they start it while they still have a full-time job, or a full-time salary, and just start the business on the side.

DF: Why? Because it’s going to take time for the job to pick up?

KG: Yeah. Because you’ll have hopefully some money to put into it, and it took me about 5 years to really gain traction. I mean it’s a little hard to determine because 2 years of that was COVID, and that pretty much was a waste.

But it took about 5 years for me to have just four people on a tour, say, to get 10 or 12 in a waiting list.

DF: Okay. So when you started off, you had four people. So it took 5 years to get

four to ten on the waiting list?

KG: To get 10 to 12 on a tour because that’s my ideal. Okay, it’s 10 to 12 people. If I have 10 to 12 people signed up for a tour, it usually has a waiting list as well.

So, I went from just having four people in the first couple years to basically quadruple the number now. That definitely takes time. I always wanted a minimum of six people, but even if I just had four the first year I would still do the tour because I needed to get testimonials, and photos of real people on the tours, and reviews. 

So as long as I wasn’t gonna lose money, even if I was just gonna come out even, I would still do the tour with just four people.

DF: That’s really excellent advice! It was 100% a pleasure to interview you.

KG: Thanks a lot. Take care for now.