How one Austin tour guide grew into a confident business owner

When Bethany Harbaugh started running Twisted Texas Tour in Austin, Texas, her first thought was that she wasn’t ready to be a business owner. For years, Harbaugh had been working at the company founded by her friend Meagan Fritts, both running tours that visit quirky local attractions — breweries, music venues, and BBQ spots, to name a few — and also helping Fritts with day-to-day operations.

Then, in 2021, Fritts passed away from cancer complications. She willed the business to Harbaugh.

“At first, it was a haze of just trying to honor the existing ticket sales,” says Harbaugh, who, as the will was being processed, ran the company while not yet owning it outright. “But then when the legal pieces settled, and I had been through a year running Twisted Texas day-to-day, that’s when I thought, ‘I can do this. And I want to do this.’”

Harbaugh officially took the reins in January 2023 and transitioned from simply managing day-to-day operations to “really getting into the financial brain,” as she puts it. The company had two sizable loans to pay off. The loans had supported the business during COVID shutdowns, but now Harbaugh needed to minimize expenses, increase profitability and look for grants that might support a woman-owned small business.

“Searching for grants led me to Verizon Small Business Digital Ready and the courses,” Harbaugh says. “I just didn’t realize there were so many resources available, let alone free resources.”

With so much knowledge at her fingertips, Harbaugh was able to move from being an accidental entrepreneur to an intentional one. “I signed up for a class called ‘Setting Smart Prices,’ and that’s when the light bulb went off,” Harbaugh says. “I knew that if I’m literally and figuratively going to own this business, this is a good way for me to make sure I’m doing the best that I can to honor Meagan’s legacy and to keep this company in good standing.”

Twisted Texas Tour is known for its colorful, full-size buses with live bands on board that take guests on high-energy tours of Austin sights and restaurants. But running a tour when the bus wasn’t full meant Harbaugh lost money. So she sought out Digital Ready courses (such as “Setting Smart Prices,” “The Four Drivers of Sales and Profits,” and “The Right Price: A Step-by-Step Guide to COGS and Pricing”) that showed her the nuts and bolts of setting profitable pricing. The courses also helped affirm pricing and strategy ideas that Harbaugh had been thinking through — one of which was running tours with fewer guests on smaller vehicles. “The class helped me make sure I was pricing for a smaller tour correctly,” Harbaugh says. “But it also confirmed that I was thinking through things the right way. As someone who didn’t plan or dream of running a business, that confirmation that I am on the right track is really meaningful.”

Harbaugh decided to acquire the two smaller vans, her first major move as owner. “The class gave me the confidence to launch new itinerary options and be sure I was pricing those properly, too,” she says, referring to a “mix and match” tour where customers choose their destinations. The small-van itineraries allowed Harbaugh to improve overall profitability by removing two kinds of losses from her balance sheet: running half-full tours on full-sized buses and refunding ticket sales when she canceled half-full tours.

With some of the big-picture finance items under control, Harbaugh turned her attention toward attracting customers. She began taking Digital Ready courses on increasing her website’s visibility and driving sales — and picked up a whole new vocabulary along the way. “I was like, ‘Wow, I don’t know 75 percent of this,’” Harbaugh says. “But now I’m not intimidated to go out and learn more.”

The courses also gave her quick wins. Through an Ask the Expert live event called “5 Ways to Increase Your Online Visibility,” she discovered that not all of the website was being indexed — meaning search engines weren’t ranking key pages — and then fixed it. “I didn’t even know that wasn’t an automatic process!” she says.

Because it was a live event, Harbaugh received direct help from the instructor. “Getting that live interaction, where the instructor could show me where to look for information was super helpful,” she says, adding that the time with the expert also upped her confidence. Harbaugh also learned to set up her analytics properly; she says there are already early indications that traffic is increasing thanks to the changes. She has booked future classes on search engine optimization, hashtags and other digital marketing tactics.

“These classes have been such a good way for me to find my baseline: Where am I doing well? Where do I need to learn more?” says Harbaugh. “I just have to keep doing what I’m doing and keep learning what I can learn.”

Harbaugh’s commitment to the company continues to be fueled by the memories of her friend. Meagan’s photo is prominently displayed on every Twisted Texas Tour bus, decorated with bright flowers. “Meagan still plays a large part in what I want for this company, because I know what her vision was,” says Harbaugh. “There are a lot of times when I look at the photo of Meagan and think, ‘Man, I wish you were here to see how cool this is.’”

Verizon Small Business Digital Ready is part of Verizon’s goal to support 1 million small businesses by 2030 with free resources to help them succeed. To sign up, visit Verizon Small Business Digital Ready. Visit CitizenVerizon.com to learn more about the company’s responsible business efforts. An individual user’s experience may vary and results are not guaranteed.