Have you ever gone on a trip, excited that you’re going somewhere you’ve always wanted to visit, only to get there and realize that there are way too many amazing sites and parks to see, but not enough time to have a great experience?
I believe that’s something many people can relate to. If that has happened to you before, you likely learned your lesson and made plans beforehand to get the most out of your trips. Even then, you might not be able to adequately cover everything, especially if you’re visiting a national park you’ve never been to before.
Ashli Nudd, the founder of Dirt In My Shoes, saw this problem and decided to create itineraries to help people make the most of their trips to national parks, including Acadia, Glacier, Yellowstone, and Yosemite national parks.
“As a former park ranger, I’m in parks all the time,” explains Ashli. “So I help people plan their trips to the park, with a special emphasis on getting out and hiking in the parks, even if they’re just shorter trails. I [also help them] avoid the crowds because the national parks have gotten so crowded.”
Ashli founded Dirt In My Shoes in 2015, and at the time, it wasn’t the blossoming business it is now. Ashli had just had a baby and decided to give up working as a park ranger to stay home with her newborn. It was a big decision, though, and she missed her job, which she loved very much, so she started writing about national parks in a small blog.
“I was writing down my favorite things to do in the national parks and I was also answering questions that I get from family and friends wondering what I like to do when I go to national parks,” she says. “[That led to] me helping other people plan their trips to the national parks. They really enjoyed my content and my advice, so I built it out from there.”
What started as a simple blog has now turned into a full-fledged business with thousands of customers and an annual six-figure revenue.”Now, I have a podcast and a YouTube channel, and I do hour-by-hour-trip itineraries if people want my specific suggestions.”
Although Ashli founded Dirt In My Shoes in 2015, it was not until 2022 that she switched over to Thinkific. Since then, she’s gotten over 16,000 customers and counting.
Want to know how she did it? Keep reading.
Skip ahead:
- She created articles for her blog—and birthed a business idea
- She switched to Thinkific
- She hired people to help her
- She wants to provide value to people
- She stands for something
- She takes a unique approach to marketing
- She creates a personal connection through her podcast
When Ashli started her blog in 2015, it was more of a creative outlet and a way to still connect with what she loves—national parks—than an actual business. While the blog posts she created were simply meant to help people have a good time at the park, they inspired her to start creating official itineraries for travelers.
When I ask Ashli what motivated her to monetize her knowledge of national parks, here’s what she says: “The reason I started [creating itineraries] was because I found out that a lot of people have the same questions for me over and over.
I noticed that people would ask why, when I go to Yellowstone, my pictures don’t have people in them, why I am able to get a specific parking spot in a place they haven’t been able to get parking in, and why crowds don’t really bother me even though the place is always crowded when they go.”
These questions inspired Ashli to create itineraries for a fee for people who want specialized information and insider tips. She started with Yellowstone National Park, and since then, she’s added about 15 more parks and national monuments.
Each itinerary contains plans and first-hand information for trips that last up to five days. There’s also 4+ hours of video content, including activity descriptions and lodging recommendations, and extra information about driving an RV, off-season travel, and nearby points of interest.
Ashli sold the itineraries she created as PDFs through Sendowl, but as time went on, she realized that there were some elements to national parks that she couldn’t communicate well to people via PDFs. She also noticed that people still had questions after purchasing the PDFs and answering them one-by-one was increasing her workload.
“I wasn’t able to do what I wanted with just a PDF document anymore; I wanted to present the information a little bit better,” Ashli says to me. “In the national parks, things can happen during the summer; there can be floods or wildfires or things that affect people’s trips. I couldn’t let them navigate that with just a PDF.”
So she started looking into other ways she could present her itineraries and other national park information better—and she found and switched to Thinkific in 2022. Although Thinkific is primarily known as an online course platform, Ashli’s business wasn’t exactly a traditional online course where people go through modules. Instead, her main focus was on compiling her PDFs and providing supplementary material to help people.
Nevertheless, Thinkific gave her the flexibility to present information to people the way she wanted.
“I use Thinkific to keep all my PDF documents in one place for people. I also like to do walk-through videos so that I can walk them through the documents—and I put all of that into each “course” for that national park, but I sell them as itineraries, not courses. I do think I use Thinkific a little differently than some people do, but it’s perfectly set up for what I want it to do.”
Right after she made the switch, Ashli saw a drop in her sales because people were still trying to come to terms and adapt to the new way she disseminated information. But once they acclimated, her business grew even bigger than before she switched to Thinkific.
“As somebody who has run a successful and fun business for 10 years, it took a minute for people to get on board with what I was doing [after the switch],” she expounds. “I did have to take the risk initially knowing that I might eliminate some of my current audience in an effort to help people better in the long run. But not only did it bounce back, it bounced back even better. I don’t get nearly as many emails from people asking questions, I’m able to serve people better, and I’ve made a lot more sales since switching.”
Ashli writes all her itineraries herself—and she doesn’t create one unless she’s been to the park multiple times over the years. For example, before she created the Yellowstone itinerary, she’d been visiting the Yellowstone National Park every year for about 10 to 15 years.
“What sets me apart from a lot of people out there is that I don’t create an itinerary unless I’ve been to the park for a long time for multiple years and multiple seasons,” Ashli explains. “My itineraries are a collection of advice, and insider tips and tricks I’ve picked up from many trips to that place.”
But running the various facets of Dirt In My Shoes all by herself is strenuous, so when she moved over to Thinkific, she put together a very small team that takes a big load off her shoulders.
For example, even though Ashli writes all her blog posts and scripts for YouTube and her podcast, she does have someone who edits and updates the blog posts to ensure all the information is accurate. She also has a designer who designs the itineraries once she’s done creating them. These itineraries are as large as 49 pages, by the way!
The great thing about Ashli’s team members is that they followed her blog or used her itineraries before she hired them. “They have a good understanding of how my business and itineraries work because they’ve used them. They’re able to provide me a lot of support because of that.”
Ashli realized over the years that the people she catered to were more of a personality than a demographic. “Some people don’t like to have set plans; [they] just like to fly by the seat of their pants, show up, and say ‘We’ll figure it out when we get there.’ These are not my audience members.”
Ashli is very much a planner, and since national parks have millions of visitors every year, she strives to help travelers like her make achievable plans for their trips. “The people who resonate with my teaching style and the way my itineraries work are people who have a fear of missing out or want to have a plan, but have no idea how to put it together… That can be any age; I have younger people in their 20s, people who are retired in their 60s and are traveling the country; single people and married people with kids who take family vacations.”
Her experience as a park ranger helps Ashli provide value to these varying audiences. As a park ranger, she answered many people’s questions at the visitors’ center, so she knows the type of information that people don’t have before they visit the park; information that would make their trip better. So she puts all that information into her itineraries, which she sells for cheap.
Paying for a typical 4-day guided tour at a national park costs nothing less than $300—and that’s on the lower side. Ashli sells her most expensive itineraries (which cover a 5-day trip) for $59; the cheapest is $29. This, she says, is partly because she’s not providing a general skill, but for the most part, she settled on this price because she prioritizes affordability.
“It’s more important to me that people experience the parks in a positive way. I wanted to keep [the prices] at a level where people who don’t have a lot of money to spend, but want a memorable vacation, could still purchase it.”
One thing consumers hate almost as much as cash grabs are businesses that don’t stand for anything. It’s why many companies are scrambling to include corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, like reducing carbon footprints and improving labor policies, in their ethos.
Even with her unbelievably cheap itineraries, Ashli donates 5% of profits from each sale to different conservancies and park funds. As a park ranger, Ashli saw, firsthand, many aspects and projects where national parks needed funding and help. So when her business took off, she started donating to these non-profit organizations to help the parks.
“It’s always been important to me to give back to the organizations that can go in and supplement what’s being done by the park service,” Ashli explains. “I handpick the conservancies that I give to because I want that money to go toward what I feel are the best projects that the parks need help with.”
She might not know it, but for the people who are just as passionate as she is about national parks, her donations give them a good reason to keep buying her itineraries and telling other people about them.
Ashli’s marketing methods are a tad unconventional. For one, she doesn’t use social media for marketing purposes. She does have Facebook and Instagram accounts, but she barely invests money into running ads.
For a long time, she relied on Google and Pinterest to drive organic traffic to her website. She also counts on word-of-mouth marketing and referrals. But recently—about 18 months ago—she diversified her marketing channels to include a YouTube channel and a podcast, which she runs with her husband, John.
“Both [the YouTube channel and podcast] have produced some great results for us as far as fostering that connection between us and our audience and helping people get to know me better—my travel style, what’s important to me, and my knowledge of the parks,” Ashli explains.
Even though Ashli has about 9,000 and 14,000 followers on Instagram and Facebook respectively, her biggest community is her email list, with over 50,000 subscribers (at the time of writing). She built this community primarily by offering people free resources and educating them about the parks.
“I focus more on educating when I send out emails,” she tells me. “People who want to know what’s going on [in the parks], the nitty-gritty stuff—I cater to that heavily in my emails. It’s just another way for me to serve my audience and give them information that’s not fluffy.”
Although she did dial back her efforts on building the email list to focus on growing her podcast listenership, Ashli says she’s now working on more free resources and drip campaigns for her email subscribers.
Speaking of the podcast, I found it interesting she decided to run it with her husband, John, rather than do it herself as she had with other parts of the business. She has a genius reason for this: building personal connections.
As a park ranger, Ashli often dealt directly with people of all ages and temperaments. However, with an online business, there’s only so much she can do by way of relating with her audience. So she thought a podcast would be a great way to connect with people, share funny stories, and show what it’s really like at national parks—without the rose-tinted spectacles.
“I felt like we needed [the podcast] to help people get to know me; to know that I am a real person with real struggles, and that going to the parks isn’t always fantastic,” Ashli says.
On her decision to bring John into the mix, Ashli explains: “My husband is different than I am: he’s funny and carefree. I thought it made sense to bring him into that piece of the business because even when we’re together, we have different experiences. We see things differently, and he adds an element of fun that I don’t naturally have.”
If you thought running Dirt In My Shoes through Thinkific has only helped Ashli get thousands of sales, you thought wrong! It has also exposed her to more business opportunities that have helped her earn multiple six figures in the last two years.
While she’s picky about the businesses she works with, Ashli has been partnering with WorldMark Hotels for a few years now, selling itineraries to people who stay in select resorts who are near the national parks. She has also been interviewed by some larger publications like Business Insider and Thrillist, which has increased brand awareness for her business.
When I ask her the key to her success, she says it’s staying authentic.
“I have never regretted staying genuine to who I am and what I’m willing to do: what I say yes to, what companies I’ll work with, and what advice goes out with my name on it. Every piece of content I produce through the YouTube channel, podcast, itineraries, and website—I want them to be a true reflection of what I believe as a person.”
In the future, Ashli’s intent on creating even more itineraries and helping people have a great time at the parks.
If you’re looking to start an online business like Ashli Nudd, sign up for Thinkific today.
