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Season 2 - Episode 6:
A Passion Turned into a Business- Tony Muia – A Slice of Brooklyn

A Passion Turned into a Business- Tony Muia – A Slice of Brooklyn

Episode Summary

In this episode, we explore what happens when you build a business based on your passion. Tony Muia from A Slice of Brooklyn shares how he turned his love for Brooklyn into a profitable and growing business venture.

Episode Notes

Since 2005, A Slice of Brooklyn Bus Tours has been showing people around Brooklyn.

The company was started by Tony Muia, a proud native Brooklynite who always loved showing people around his beloved hometown.

Tony slowly starting doing informal tours for those same folks when they came to visit NYC, driving them around in his car. Soon, their friends and families would visit NYC and ask Tony to do tours for them so he did them as a side hobby while still working his regular job.

In 2004 Tony decided to switch careers after watching NYC tourism increase. However, it mostly focused on Manhattan and Tony felt that Brooklyn had enough amazing foods, neighbourhoods, landmarks and movie locations that it needed its own tour. And that’s when he decided to launch A Slice of Brooklyn Pizza Tour in 2005 with other tours that followed.

What started as a hobby turned into a family business and today he has 3 popular tours that run year round and have proudly introduced over 90,000 people to Brooklyn.

Some people say don’t make your passion your business, but you’re in a business that is inspired by your passion, you have to dive in with both feet.

Tony designed this business around his life, brought in the people who were closest to him and got them invested in his idea, and never looked back.

Here are the key takeaways from Tony’s Story:

  • Go to where your audience is – If you want to entice people come to Brooklyn, you might need to pick them up in Manhattan. Which figurative borough are your customers hanging out in right now? Get it? 
  • Don’t be afraid to ask questions – your mentors and supporters can help steer you in the right direction.
  • Delegate, delegate,  delegate – you don’t need to do it all!
  • Leverage press to grow your business
  • Make friends with your customers

That’s what’s kept Tony in business for 15 years.

Guest

Tony Muia and Ronnie from A Slice of Brooklyn –https://asliceofbrooklyn.com/

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the guests and production team and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of ‘2ndSite.INC dba FreshBooks, its employees or affiliates.’