On this week’s episode, we’re featuring Paul Whitten, Founder of Nashville Adventures. His path took him from Army service to the Peace Corps to being a UK Parliamentary Fellow — and then to his entrepreneurial journey with Nashville Adventures. We’re talking about service marketing, community partnerships, working with your competitors… and somehow at the same time we’re talking about ghosts, hot chicken, distilleries, pub crawls, corporate tours — and let’s not forget about that hassle-free bachelorette party. Caution: You just might learn some history in the process.
Transcript:
Jeff:
Welcome to the Small Business Miracles podcast.
I’m Jeff Randolph. This small business podcast is brought to you by EAG Advertising and Marketing.
We’re here to talk about marketing. We’re also here to celebrate entrepreneurs by diving into their story, and we’re going to learn a little bit more about what makes them tick today. We’re getting all our girlfriends together, and we’re going to go on a bachelorette trip to Nashville. Or maybe it’s a ghost tour, depending on who you are and what you’re doing.
We’re talking to Paul Whitten today, and Paul is founder of Nashville Adventures. We’re going to hear about digital storytelling. We’re going to hear about how to build that brand from the beginning. We’re going to hear about service marketing. You’re going to learn about how to make sure your business relationships are where they need to be. And then we’re going to put Paul into the lightning round, you know, like we do.
So if you’re ready, let’s bring Paul into the conversation.
Hi, welcome back to the show. I am here with Paul Whitten. Paul is the founder of Nashville Adventures. Paul, welcome to the show.
Paul:
Man, it’s great to be here, Jeff. Absolutely excited.
Jeff:
Yeah, you are. You’re the founder of Nashville Adventures. But before we get into all that, because we are going to dive into the entrepreneur story, you’ve got some backstory here that I think not every entrepreneur journey is the same, and yours is different.
You were a combat veteran in Afghanistan. You were in the Peace Corps, a UK Parliamentary Fellow. You were Tennessee’s GM of the year. That’s a path. Could you talk about the path that leads us to today, to Nashville Adventures, to that point?
Paul:
Love it, Jeff. Let’s hit it right off the bat. That sounds all fancy what you just said, but the God’s honest truth is I had no idea what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. That is the God’s honest truth.
I didn’t find my dream job or what I even wanted to do until I was damn near years old. It didn’t matter if I was enlisting in the Army and later going to the Citadel and continuing my time in the Army, whether that was being a UK Parliamentary Fellow or all this stuff you listed. To be real honest with you, it was me trying to find a place where I was truly happy professionally.
I literally did exact opposite things. There ain’t two things more different than combat arms in the U.S. Army in a time of war and the Peace Corps. There is literally the exact opposite.
Everything I’ve done, though, has led to Nashville Adventures. One thing I always try to push on people is that you always have an opportunity to learn. You learn more from bad leaders than you do from good leaders. As an individual, you make a choice of how you handle your situations. If you’re in a bad spot, you’re still in a grand classroom of learning.
That is the biggest thing I’ve learned. Everything I’ve done has taught me something.
Jeff:
Yeah, yeah. We say this on this podcast a few times. One of the quotes we use quite a bit is that from success you don’t learn very much, but from failure you learn a lot. You can learn from other people’s failures as well.
Paul:
Exactly. Exactly. Amen.
Jeff:
Let’s get into Nashville Adventures. You do tours, corporate events. Give us an overview of what this animal looks like.
Paul:
Yeah. Nashville Adventures is a tour operator. We do ghost tours, pub crawls, history events, private events, corporate events, Civil War tours, cemetery tours, all sorts of stuff.
I started this thing basically out of boredom. I used to work corporate Amazon in a previous life, and I started this working weekends just to be busy. It echoes back to when I was younger. When I was active duty, I got hurt pretty good. After Afghanistan, they sent me back stateside, and I had a couple back surgeries.
I was bored out of my mind in the evenings, and all my friends were still in Afghanistan. I was sitting at Fort Knox, Kentucky, so I tried to stay busy. I went to the Fort Knox Patton Museum and just walked around giving tours to people. I worked with the civilian who ran the Army historical program and said, “Hey, I’m bored. Let me do this,” and he said yes.
Walking around talking about Patton’s pearl-handled revolver was the highlight of my professional existence before Nashville Adventures. If you ask me what I had more fun doing—walking to the Palace of Westminster with a Southern accent or working in the Patton Museum for nothing—it was the Patton Museum.
When I started this, the goal was just to have fun and show off the city I love so much. It evolved into what it is now. It’s the Venn diagram of what I love: I love history, I love people, and to be honest with you, I love making money.
Jeff:
We can own that. That’s okay.
Paul:
Amen. If I’m good at it, I’m not going to charge nothing for it. And when I hire folks who love it as well, it enhances the experience.
It is my pride and joy. Other than my child, it is my child.
Jeff:
You’ve got corporate tours, ghost tours, walking tours. Throw some flavor out there. Nobody’s going to say Nashville sounds like a terrible time.
Paul:
Everything I started this business for was an answer to a gap in Nashville. Nashville is known as the bachelorette capital of the world, but there were no Civil War tours. There was a story not being told.
Before Nashville was a city, it was a frontier and an active Civil War site. That foundation led to it becoming Music City, and that story wasn’t being told worth a damn.
The best way to enhance your experience in a city is to understand why you went there. Broadway is fun, but why is it there? When you understand the roots and connections, it enhances everything.
Our history tour gives you way more than a Wikipedia page. You’ll have songwriters, singers, Broadway performers, and historians leading tours. We’ll go into honky-tonks, we know the bands, and that’s a major differentiation point.
Our ghost tours are historically accurate. Our pub crawls are built on relationships with distilleries. You’re basically spending what you’d spend on alcohol anyway, but with a historian explaining why Tennessee whiskey matters.
The whole premise is that you’re being led by a history nerd you want to have a beer with, not the librarian you hated in seventh grade.
Jeff:
That’s a perfect description.
Paul:
Exactly.
Jeff:
Let’s talk digital storytelling. How did you build your digital footprint?
Paul:
I’ve got a ton of useless history degrees I was trying to justify. I felt there was a failure in public history, where history was being told behind glass.
History is best told where it happened. That increases what I call the sticky factor. People remember it longer.
We’re building interactive historical content digitally that enhances people’s experience, promotes our brand, and actually educates them in a non-threatening way while associating us with a warm and fuzzy feeling. That’s the special sauce.
Jeff:
You’re in a competitive market. How do you approach competition?
Paul:
I didn’t even know competition like this existed when I started. I was incredibly naive, and that was a gift.
I engage everyone. I’m participatory. When you’re close to competitors, you learn from them and learn what to avoid.
The Chambers of Commerce, tourism groups, and concierge associations are like gyms. You don’t go once. You go over and over. That’s been a huge contributor to our success.
Your customers are number one. Your competitors are number two.
Jeff:
That’s a great analogy.
Paul:
We’re enhancing what we’re good at. We’re launching XR tours, where guests can see the beginning of Nashville through goggles while standing in the actual location.
We’re scaling corporate and private events. We can build custom leadership history tours on demand. Nod yes, even when you don’t know yet, and figure it out.
Jeff:
Lightning round time. Are you ready?
Paul:
Don’t tempt me with a good time. Let’s go.
Jeff:
Funniest or most unexpected thing that’s happened on a tour?
Paul:
I corrected a guy on stadium seating numbers. Turns out he was the owner of the Titans. That was fun.
Jeff:
What does resilience mean to you?
Paul:
It’s the ability to keep moving when revenue isn’t where you want it. Dust yourself off, give the best experience possible, and keep grinding.
Jeff:
Hot chicken. Where do you land?
Paul:
Red’s is my favorite. Bolton’s is great but risky. Hot chicken is hard to mess up, but Nashville hot is no joke.
Jeff:
Small business miracle—what’s yours?
Paul:
Service. Be obnoxiously service-oriented. If you’re not insane about service, no one’s going to care about you early on.
Jeff:
Tell people where they can find you.
Paul:
NashvilleAdventures.com. Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn. Google it, even on Bing. Give us a try.
Jeff:
Paul Whitten, founder of Nashville Adventures. Thanks so much for being here.
Paul:
Thank you, Jeff. I appreciate you.
Jeff:
And that is our show. Thanks so much for listening to the Small Business Miracles podcast. Remember to subscribe, leave us a five-star rating and review, and drop us a line at eagadv.com. Until then, we’ll be out here helping entrepreneurs with another small business miracle.