On this week’s Niche Pursuits podcast, Nick Gray and I discuss turning personal passions into marketable businesses, the power of books to build trust, and the modern role of personal websites in SEO and reputation. This unusual interview challenges standard marketing ideas and explores unconventional paths to influence.
The first half followed a familiar path: Nick shared how he built Museum Hack into a company that made millions from random museum tours for friends. The second half turned into a back-and-forth conversation about personal websites, empowerment, institutional clarity, and what business owners might be missing if they only focus on their company’s site.
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How a hobby turned into a museum
Nick Gray didn’t set out to become a museum entrepreneur. He moved to New York, started visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art and started showing his friends around for fun.
The Met gave him plenty of material to work with:
- 2.7 million square meters of area
- About 50 acres inside Central Park
- Scale enough to feel overwhelming to casual visitors
- A reputation that can intimidate people who don’t see themselves as “museum people.”
Nick did not study art history. He has never been a tour guide. That became part of the advantage. Instead of creating tours for art lovers, he created tours for people who think museums are boring. It focused on stories, gossip, money, romance, competition, and quirky details that traditional tours often skip.
How the filling product has changed
At first, Nick gave tours to his friends. Then friends turned to other friends. A blog wrote about his tours, calling them one of the best things to do in New York, and more than 1,000 people wanted to take part.
This demand forced a difficult decision: get paid or continue to treat it as a hobby. Nick started small, about $19 or $29 per person. On the first paid tour, he gave everyone their money back because he enjoyed the experience so much.
The filling proved to be one of the best business decisions he has made yet. People were more respectful of the experience after paying. A few price details stand out:
- Museum Hack tours were then sold for $79-$99 per person.
- The company targeted people willing to pay for experiences such as concerts, Broadway shows, sports and other city activities.
- A standard museum tour might cover 5 or 6 works per hour.
- The Museum Hack tours covered about 15 pieces per hour.
- Pace, humor and storytelling made the product feel different from the start.
This position was important. Nick was not selling admission to the museum. He was selling a more fun way to experience it.
A business that goes beyond Nick
One of the hardest parts of any personality-based business is getting the founder out of the delivery role. Nick ran into this problem early on.
A friend told him that the business could never scale because Nick was a product. Instead of accepting this, Nick hired people who could carry the energy of the experience. His recruitment strategy was unusual:
- Stand-up comedians
- Broadway actors
- Freelancers are used to flexible working
- People may want to have a drink after the tour
This decision helped Museum Hack grow beyond a guide and a city. The first expansion was Washington, DC, because it was close enough to New York to manage.
The best-performing cities had two characteristics: large visitor demand and a deep pool of freelance workers. There were people with side gigs, performance backgrounds, and flexible schedules in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.
How the Museum Hack Works with Museums
Museum Hack started as a renegade tour company, meaning museums wouldn’t allow it. This created tension. Museums sometimes tried to shut down the company. Nick and his team had to work around the rules, deal with uncertainty and find ways to keep the tours going.
Eventually, the relationship became more collaborative. If Museum Hack sold a $79 tour, it would cover the full price of museum admission for each guest, which is usually about $25. This made the value clearer:
- Museums received ticket revenue
- Guests who could not visit otherwise came
- Museum Hack managed the guest experience
- The tour company controlled its distinctive style
It was not a frictionless model. However, the arrangement showed how a company can switch to an outside revenue partner when incentives are aligned.
Nick’s final speech
Nick never expected to sell Museum Hack. It was labor-intensive, unusual, and not the pure software job many buyers were after.
The company expanded to many cities and generated millions in revenue. Nick said he worked hard to turn it into a $5-10 million company, but they couldn’t break $3 million in annual sales.
By then, he had relieved himself of day-to-day operations. His management team ran the company and eventually approached him with an offer to buy it.
The deal used full seller financing, which was not common. In Nick’s case, the buyers put in zero dollars and paid him out of the company’s profits over time. This structure worked according to the trust:
- Buyers were already doing business
- They knew the numbers
- They had a deep company context
- Nick believed they were committed to continuing their growth
He sold his business in 2019. Then COVID hit, the museums closed, and the company’s revenue dropped to zero.
The new owners have shifted to remote team-building practices. Nick described this painful restart as a blessing because it pushed the business toward better margins and a more profitable model.
The Book That Makes a Difference
After selling Museum Hack in 2019, Nick launched The 2-Hour Cocktail Party in 2022. He wanted to write a book for branding reasons, but he wanted it to be more than a thought leadership project.
He wanted a tactical, workbook-style guide to hosting small gatherings. His specialty was 15-25 person events, and the book gave him a way to teach that formula at scale.
The financial side was less attractive. Nick spent about $60,000 on high-end design, layout and publishing support. A few book details stood out:
- It took about five years to write and release
- It was self-published
- Nick wrote this with the support of a team of writers
- Design and layout were huge investments
- Direct financial ROI was not the primary reward
The book built trust in a way reminiscent of podcasting. When someone spends hours with your thoughts, it creates a deeper connection than a short post or social update.
LLMs Changed the Book Question
Nick also discussed whether business non-fiction still holds the same value in the LLM era. This question is important for entrepreneurs who are considering writing.
A book can still build authority, connect, and give people a structured way to spend time with your ideas. A more difficult question is whether the book is the best format today. Other formats may compete for attention:
- Blog series
- Online courses
- Short videos
- Podcasts
- Email newsletters
- AI-powered learning pathways
Nick said he was happy while writing his book. He was less sure he would take the same route today if he were to compare it to the new formats.
Personal Websites Became The Next Business
Nick’s newest project is PersonalWebsites.org, a service that creates and manages personal websites. Its basic offering is around $29 per month.
This passion comes from his own experience. Nick has had a personal website for 25-26 years, which he says has helped him meet people, make connections and shape his online presence.
The argument is simple: people Google names. They also ask AI tools about people, companies, founders, service providers and potential partners. A personal website gives someone a place to tell that story directly. Use cases include:
- Business owners who want a profile outside of their company website
- Professionals who want to make a name for themselves on the Internet
- Parents who want a basic social presence
- Founders who may one day sell the company
- Buyers turn to business owners
- Speakers, authors, consultants and operators
Nick emphasized that this is not about suppressing negative search results. It is an active reputation business aimed at giving people a reliable source of who they are.
How Jared’s Website Became Part of the Interview
The interview took an unexpected turn when Nick brought up JaredBauman.com and critiqued it live. This turned the conversation from a standard interview to something closer to the old Niche Pursuits news episodes.
Nick liked that Jared’s site included powerful photos, a speaker highlight reel, endorsements, testimonials, and authority signals. He also suggested dividing the site into more pages. His main suggestion was to create more “surface area” around the person:
- A separate page about
- Contact page
- Photo page
- Dedicated pages for conversation or media
- More indexable pages related to name
The goal was not to turn a personal site into a second company site. This was to provide search engines and artificial intelligence systems with more structured signals about the person, their work and their relationships with other entities.
Insights into how Nick’s personal websites support SEO and GEO
The conversation turned to SEO, GEO, AEO, and the role that personal websites can play in helping machines distinguish between people and brands. In this context, Jared Bauman, as a person, is one entity, and 201 Creative, as a business, is another.
This separation is important when founders and companies are closely related. Many local businesses blur the line between owner and company, making it difficult for Google and AI systems to tell who is who. A personal site can help clarify:
- The individual’s career history
- The person’s current company
- Past businesses
- Podcast appearances
- Speaking experience
- Associations, education and social work
- Relationship between person and business
Nick shared that his team has migrated about 80 personal websites from WordPress to a static setup using Payload CMS and Astro. Their PageSpeed Insights score increased from 87-88 to 99.
This technical improvement is important because personal websites are often simple. They can be fast, static, clean and easy for search engines to work with.
Nick’s new business is growing
Nick described PersonalWebsites.org as having been in business for about a year. He compared it to Museum Hack in its early stages, where it spent years experimenting before treating it as a larger company.
At the time of the interview, he had about 80 clients and was earning about $3,000 to $4,000 a month. Business is still finding a sharper market focus. Possible customer groups include:
- Real estate professionals
- Lawyers
- Doctors
- Business buyers
- Business sellers
- Local business owners
- Professionals with a public reputation
Nick wants the service to remain private, while exploring ways to make it more scalable. This tension reflects the same problem he faced with Museum Hack: how do you make something bigger without losing the quality that makes it work?
Final Thoughts
This episode started with a rather unusual business story, moved on to the value of books, and then turned into a lively discussion about personal websites, authority, GEO and how people look online.
Nick Gray’s career has a clear theme through all three projects. It takes overlooked things like museum tours, small gatherings, and personal websites, then makes them more useful, more fun, and easier to navigate.
The biggest result is that personal reputation becomes a more visible business asset. Whether someone is selling a company, building authority, gaining local customers, or getting AI tools to accurately describe them, having a clear personal website can be more important than many people think.
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