“To fuel growth, some business waste is normal and expected. Skip trying to optimize every decision and instead be willing to invest a little extra to just ‘get it done’ or ‘try it out’. It’s more important to keep moving forward, and you can often reduce costs later.”
This interview is with Tasia Duske, the CEO of Museum Hack.
What is your company and what is its main goal?
Museum Hack is known for leading Renegade Tours of the world’s best museums. Museum Hack exists to reimagine and inspire new adult museum experiences around the world. We do this through unconventional themed museum tours. A great example of this is our Badass Bitches tour which runs at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, The National Gallery of Art in DC, The Getty in Los Angeles and the de Young Museum in San Francisco.
If you are a museum hater or even museum apathetic then prepare for mind = blown, because we are going to show you these institutions are not just pretty damn cool but are also the social and cultural amplifier on your brief-yet-meaningful-existence. In recent decades, museums are the under-dogs, and like Hamilton, the Mighty Ducks and NYC rent, they are going to rise up. We see a future where museums are the fulcrum of strong communities, and we’re singing them praises every single day. Come rap with us.
When did you start your business and why?
On a starlit evening in 2013, our founder, Nick Gray, went on a date to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. That night Nick fell in love… with the museum. Over the next few weeks, the would-be founder hosted renegade tours for his friends; the media called it “the best damn museum tour money can’t buy” and after 5 years of magic we now run 30+ weekly public tours, team building events for some of the top brands in America and consult for museums around the world. Every day we’re hustlin’ because the world needs to know what Nick learned on that first date: that museums are f***ing awesome!
What makes you different from your competition?
Our renegade museum tours are small, VIP, fast-paced, and story-based. They include social elements and actions that give our guests a new perspective on the galleries (and life). And sometimes they include wine! Each tour is crafted by the individual guide which means no two tours are alike and are driven by the unique passion of each guide.
What marketing channels do you use for your growth?
Museum Hack has been a bootstrapped venture from the beginning. Because we have never asked for outside investment, we have focussed cost-effective marketing activities to grow the business. Some examples of our cost-effective marketing channels include content marketing, social media, SEO, email, and DIY PR. Each of these channels has a different approach, but we found that if we did more work than our competition, we would stand out. For example, instead of writing a ~300-word blog article, we wrote a 10,000+ word resource on the topic. Instead of sending a quick email to a journalist, we record custom videos to media and send that instead. Our advice has always been if you “Do More” and do it over a period of time, you will begin to see results. We’ve seen results that have allowed us to reach our target market, bring in revenue and allow us to re-invest in the business. In fact, our growth has allowed us to launch a sister company, The Great Guac Off, which runs team building activities via a guacamole making competition in fourteen cities including Austin, Chicago, Los Angeles, Denver, and New York. Our clients have included HelloFresh, Twilio, EY and more.
What are you expected to grow in terms of revenue in the next 12 months?
Revenue growth is not our top priority over the next 12 months.
