Adam Guy runs I Know A Guy NYC Tours, a solo private tour business he started after quitting a 25-year fundraising and marketing career during COVID. Mitch and Adam unpack what it actually looks like to refuse the standard playbook of growth, hiring, and operational scale, and instead build a six-figure business around one person and a defined niche. Adam stays in New York City. He runs only private small group tours, half day or full day, averaging about three and a half guests. He’s raised his prices five times in four years and has zero plans to open a second city.
The conversation digs into the mechanics that make this work. Adam treats the pre-tour phone call as marketing, drops a handwritten welcome kit at the hotel before the guest arrives, posts personal stories about guests on Facebook every day with a four to five week delay, and writes guest personas before he writes copy. He breaks down his actual numbers: 252 tours, 88 percent margin, 75 percent of business from word of mouth and social, an SEO channel that grew from 1 percent to 11 percent. He explains why he says no to food tours, comic book tours, and a second city, and how he refers those guests out without taking a commission. Operators will walk away with a working model for building pricing power, brand gravity, and repeat referrals as a one-person business.
Resources:
- I Know A Guy NYC Tours (Instagram and Facebook: @iknowaguynyc)
- Trip School, where Adam credits the bootcamp as part of his start
Key Takeaways
- Start with why, then choose the lane the why requires. 04:12 Adam started with people as his core motivation and worked backward to identify which slice of the tour industry would let him deliver on that. He ruled out big student groups, traveling around the country, and adult bus tours. What remained was small group private tours in New York, where he could spend half a day to two days with the same guests and build real relationships.
- Word of mouth is fully trackable if you actually ask every guest. 08:00 to 10:50 Adam logs the source of every booking, including which Facebook group, which friend, which neighborhood referral. He has a casual conversation with every guest before the tour and asks how they heard about him. Seventy-five percent of his business comes through word of mouth and social, including Facebook group recommendations, and he treats those neighborhood-based referral clusters as a known marketing channel rather than a happy accident.
- Show up in multiple places because guests will Google you before booking. 11:11 to 12:00 Even when a mom finds Adam in a Facebook group, she will Google him next, especially because he’s going to be alone with her kids. Reviews, social presence, website testimonials, and Facebook stories all need to validate the same brand. No single channel sells the tour. The collective signal does.
- The guest is your responsibility from first contact to airport, not just during the tour. 12:22 to 15:30 Adam considers a guest his responsibility the moment they reach out, not the moment the tour starts. That window includes pre-tour planning calls, hotel arrival logistics, subway lessons, mid-trip check-ins, and a goodbye text after they leave New York. The tour itself is one piece of a much longer service relationship.
- Drop the welcome kit at the hotel before the guest arrives. 13:00 to 14:00 Adam assembles a packet with a handwritten card, branded gummy bears, branded hand sanitizer, a magnet, and a free city map he picks up daily. He texts the guest before they leave home to say it’s waiting for them. Arrival in an unfamiliar city is the highest-stress moment of the trip, and that envelope is what they touch first.
- The pre-tour phone call is marketing, not customer service. 15:30 to 16:30, 36:18 to 37:00 Adam spends an hour on the phone with most guests planning their full trip, sometimes at six in the morning to accommodate Australia. He reframes the time cost: that hour replaces thousands of dollars in advertising he didn’t pay for. By the end of the call, the guest is bought in, trusts him, and is excited. A point-and-click booking does not produce that result.
- Read the room and adjust the plan in real time. 22:00 to 25:00 Adam designs a route but constantly assesses whether the group is tired, hungry, bored, or needs a bathroom. Private tours give him that flexibility. His rule: if you don’t finish the whole plan, the guest still walks away thinking they saw an enormous amount, because the experience was paced to them rather than to the itinerary.
- Tell guests what not to use you for. 24:30, 35:00 Adam actively dissuades guests from using his time on Empire State Building lines or other attractions where he adds no value. He tells them how to buy tickets and when to go on their own. He also recommends cutting their must-see list in half and spending the saved time wandering Greenwich Village or Central Park. Telling guests where you don’t add value increases trust in where you do.
- Branded swag works only when it has a function and travels. 25:30 to 27:50 Hand sanitizer gets carried daily. Magnets stay on fridges and live there for years. Gummy bears get eaten on the tour. Adam picked items that get used, get seen, and stay visible after the trip. One guest’s branded hand sanitizer was spotted by a stranger in an airport in Argentina who already followed Adam on Facebook.
- Sell the experience by showing it, not by promoting it. 28:13 to 30:25 Adam posts one piece of content per day, almost never promotional, and delays guest stories four to five weeks before posting. The stories are personal, written with permission, and built around two or three specific moments from the tour. Two or three times a year he’ll mention Christmas booking up. Otherwise the content sells the tour by demonstrating what it feels like.
- Only build tours where every neighborhood has a wow moment and a bathroom. 33:00 to 34:00 Adam refuses to use the Lower East Side as a primary tour neighborhood despite its rich immigrant history because the wow moments are too thin and the bathroom situation is bad. In Brooklyn Heights, he walks backwards as the group approaches the overlook so he can watch their reactions. The wow moment is the unit of design, not the neighborhood itself.
- Help guests plan their entire trip, not just your portion of it. 13:00, 36:18 to 37:00 Adam helps guests build their four or five day itinerary even when most of it has nothing to do with him. He critiques their ChatGPT itineraries (he gives most a C minus), recommends Broadway shows, suggests when to do the Statue of Liberty. The advice is free. The trust it builds is not.
- A solo guide can run a six-figure business with 88 percent margin by refusing to hire. 37:26 to 40:51 Adam ran 252 tours last year, exceeded his revenue goal by 11 percent, and operates at an 88 percent margin. He has hired sub-guides for overflow tours and decided the management work outweighed the revenue. Hiring guides was more work than running the tours himself, so he stopped.
- Raise prices when demand outpaces capacity. 41:50 Adam’s growth strategy when demand keeps climbing is to raise prices, not to add guides or open new cities. He’s done it five times in four years. The lever is pricing power, not headcount.
- Stay in your lane and refer the rest out, no commission required. 40:50 to 54:00, 53:30 to 54:00 Adam says no often. No food tours, no comic book tours, no second city, no Chicago expansion. When a guest asks for something he doesn’t do, he refers them to a guide he trusts and takes nothing. The discipline protects his margin, his brand, and his energy. The free referrals build the local network that sends business back his way.