After being dragged by his parents to Europe as a teen, Steves developed a deep love for travel and soon realized that he could make a career out of teaching others how to plan smart itineraries while sticking to a budget. Popular lectures, tours, guidebooks, radio and TV shows, a website, and an app have followed. Now nearing 70, Steves employs 109 people but still conducts his own research trips and isn’t sure he’ll ever make time for a nonworking vacation. HBR: How did you shift from reluctant to passionate traveler? Steves: My dad imported pianos from Germany and Austria. When he told me, “Son, we’re going to Europe to see the piano factories,” I thought, That’s a stupid idea. But I got over there and discovered different candy, different [soda] pop, and statuesque women with hairy armpits. It was a strange wonderland for this little bumpkin from Edmonds, Washington. I remember being on the next trip, in a train station in Copenhagen with my parents, surrounded by kids a few years older than me with rail passes and backpacks while exciting destinations like Berlin and Stockholm clicked up on the reader board, and thinking, Europe can be my playground, too. As a young adult, I started going on my own. I was a piano teacher, and I couldn’t get kids to practice in the summer, so I said, “I’m not going to fight this. I’ll head to Europe and see you in September.” When did you realize the hobby could become a career? It was a great time to be traveling with no money, and I was learning all the budget tricks, so I started giving talks to share the lessons. Then I ran a class called European Travel Cheap! at the University of Washington’s experimental college. I thought a handful of students would sign up, but 100 did, at $8 each, and I realized I’d struck a nerve. People needed this kind of information, and I could make money teaching it. Next it occurred to me that I could make a living doing tours. And then the books followed, because when I gave lectures, I’d have my tour materials lying around to thumb through, and time and again attendees would steal them. I thought, I don’t want to drive decent people to theft. This should be available for retail purchase. So I put all the information down on paper. At the time, travel information was mostly advertiser-driven, but I was adamant that I wouldn’t be a shill for the industry. I would be an advocate for the consumer. I measured success from the very beginning not by how much money I made but by how many trips I had an impact on. That was the start of a series of books—now around 90 titles covering all of Europe, updated passionately every year—and each of them is number one in its category because of that philosophy of cutting the superlatives and offering a smart itinerary. It’s a $25 tool for $3,000 adventures. How have you navigated the past few decades of technology-driven changes in how people both consume information and travel? I don’t worry about it too much. My main thing is to produce strong content in whatever medium is working for people. I have wonderful collaborators. I give lectures anywhere I can. My TV shows are free on public television. My radio shows are free. I’ve got technology beyond my wildest dreams to amplify my teaching. My app includes 61 free audio tours. Our guided tours—about 30,000 people every year—subsidize the rest. But I’m doing the same thing I always have: helping people get more out of their time and money on European trips. My mission, I like to joke, is to inspire and equip Americans to venture beyond Orlando. Perfectly smart, capable people go back to Disney World six or seven times without ever leaving the country, and I just say, “Hey, try Portugal instead. If you don’t like it, you can go back to Disney.” Europe, for me, is the wading pool for world exploration, and culture shock is the growing pains of a broadened perspective. What advice can you give about communicating effectively no matter the medium? Specialize in one thing and do it really well. I marvel—and am sometimes aghast—at how many tour companies will suddenly do Costa Rica or Iceland because it’s trendy. I don’t go with trends. I want to be laser-focused on my little niche of the travel market: Europe for beginners. I’m not an expert on the fine wines of Piedmont, or shopping in Paris. I teach Joe Six-Pack how to go to Spain, Italy, Scandinavia, and not be overwhelmed but instead be stimulated. Likewise, even though the conventional wisdom today is that everything on radio or TV should be short and snappy, I’ve stuck to long-form because it works for me and is full of valuable content. Maybe it’s selfish or overconfident, but I’ve been lucky enough to get away with it. I just steer a steady course. I love what I do, and I’ll do it whether it’s a big success or a little one. In the age of ubiquitous information, how do you keep finding “backdoor” secrets? When I started out, there was not enough information. Now there’s too much. You can go online and find a world of sources, but the downside is that any rookie can pose as an expert, so consumers need to be savvy. I do research trips every year, and that never gets old because Europe is still a work in progress. For example, I was just visiting the capitals of Scandinavia, and each one has an old, formerly run-down industrial quarter that now is full of edgy new restaurants and shops and fun activities, so I have to revamp our coverage, and that’s thrilling. Another big theme this year has been helping our travelers avoid the crowds, and I’m a big fan of what I call “second” cities. Everybody goes to Paris, Lisbon, Edinburgh, Berlin, Dublin. What about Lyon, Porto, Glasgow, Hamburg, Belfast? Even in Porto, the most popular site right now is an art nouveau bookshop that J.K. Rowling mentioned; because of social media, there’s a 200-yard-long line to see it. All over Europe there are these Instagram spots, or ones from TV or movies that people make pilgrimages to. We try to stay away from all that. Do you want to be a crowd follower or an explorer? That’s what I try to help people navigate. Rick Steves Shares His Love of Travel Rick Steves' Europe Taping his radio show, Travel with Rick Steves Rick Steves' Europe A 16-year-old Rick, wearing a bold plaid jacket, stands in front of an airplane between his mother and his younger sister, Linda. Rick Steves' Europe Rick in Asia in 1978 Rick Steves' Europe Taking a break from filming in Italy’s Dolomites Rick Steves' Europe Rick and his TV crew in the Scottish Highlands Rick Steves' Europe Rick in Bern, Switzerland You’ve been described as a workaholic. True? I’ve always got some mission or project. It’s a strange obligation that I feel, but it energizes me and fills me with joy. When I’m in Europe, I work every day—gathering information, producing content, helping people have good trips, connecting them with small businesses, employing people myself, and making money. And when I get home, I feel younger than I did when I left. It’s not a life in balance, but it’s a beautiful kind of wellness. So no relaxing on a beach in Tahiti for you? I would love to go anywhere in the South Pacific. I’ve never been there, and I dream about it. But right now I’ve got work to do in Europe. Tahiti will wait. Do you ever delegate? Are there Ricks-in-training? Oh, yeah. I used to pride myself on doing it all myself, but I can’t now. I’m almost 70, and I’ve got to start slowing down a bit while still keeping the whole system going. I have a few key people who are my most prolific coauthors, and together we help train our researchers. And for the past three years I’ve done mentoring tours, where I’m the guide for 24 new guides on a Rick Steves bus. They’re all professionals already, but I want them to know what’s important to me, what distinguishes our tours, and how I make them sparkle. After eight to 10 days together, they really know the drill, and for the rest of their careers with us, they’ll draw on that experience and keep that attitude, philosophy, and personality vibrant. Any tips for business travelers? Hire a local guide and instruct that person to get you as far away as possible from the kinds of places where you’d normally sleep, eat, meet, and network. Get your fingers dirty in the local culture. What’s the secret to effective cross-cultural communication, especially when there’s a language barrier? This is nothing to brag about, but I speak only English. I’m able to write my guidebooks, make my TV shows, lead my tours, and have my vacations speaking the world’s linguistic common denominator. These days, any young person in Europe, and especially in tourism, is very likely to speak English. But you do have to be willing to embrace and celebrate the cultural differences from country to country. How do you think about the negative environmental impact of frequent travel? This is an important issue. First, science tells us that flying puts X amount of carbon into the atmosphere and that Y invested in carbon mitigation can zero that out. As a businessman who takes approximately 30,000 people from the United States to Europe and back every year, I wish I were taxed for our emissions, but I’m not. So I pay a self-imposed carbon tax of $30 per traveler, rounded up to $1 million annually, which we invest in a portfolio of about a dozen nonprofit organizations that mostly work to help farmers in the Global South practice climate-smart agriculture. It’s nothing heroic. It’s just baseline ethical to pay for the carbon for the flights that you or your tour members take and then go as green as you can. Second, I don’t want anyone to be flight-shamed out of traveling, because when we travel, we become a force for peace and sustainability in the world. We help our country fit into the family of nations. We come home with a broader perspective and can help others be enthusiastic about building bridges instead of walls. We recognize that the challenges confronting us have no borders and are immune to conventional weaponry. They need to be dealt with by countries working together with good governance that embraces science. So we want to travel in a way that minimizes the environmental impact and maximizes the value of international understanding.