On the first Tuesday of every month, we’ll announce a new Female Founder, including a video interview of them sharing their business story. Want to be featured as a Female Founder?
Contact Memberships for more details. The Female Founders Program would not be possible without our Title Sponsor, Scotiabank.
To learn a little more about the Scotiabank Women Initiative, and why they’ve chosen to sponsor this program, see the video below.
The next Female Founder we’re featuring is Juanita Metzger, Owner & Operator of Stroll Walking Tours.
Juanita Metzger is the owner and operator of Stroll Walking Tours based in Waterloo Region.
A passion for community, slow travel and hyper local experiences make guided walking tours the ideal business for Juanita. Since growing up in the rural area of Waterloo Region and moving to Kitchener in 2000, Juanita has worked in neighbourhood community development with a focus on placemaking, urban space and getting people engaged and connected to the place where they live. As a walker, she coordinated and led walks with Jane’s Walk Waterloo Region for six years and walks everywhere when travelling.
Juanita shares her local and travel experiences in publications such as The Globe and Mail, Grand Magazine, The Community Edition and various community blogs. Juanita lives in Downtown Kitchener. She is usually late getting to where she’s going because there is always someone to stop and talk to in the neighbourhood!
To learn more about Juanita’s journey as a Female Founder, watch the interview below (or read the written format).
How did you start your business?
Stroll Walking Tours is a guided walking tour business in Waterloo region and me and nine other guides – host walking tours in Cambridge, Kitchener, Waterloo and St. Jacobs and we are all about getting people connected to places and spaces and histories and people in Waterloo Region that you may or may not be familiar with. We really want to get people connected to the places where they live or where they might be visiting.
And Stroll got started as a bit of an extension of work that I’ve done over the past 20+ years in community development and community engagement work and I started the business pre-pandemic but once the pandemic hit everything changed and I actually completely revised the business plan and completely shifted what I planned to do with the business and it’s grown into something I never really expected.
What were you doing before you started your business?
Before I started my business, I was working in neighborhood community development in neighborhoods all across Waterloo region and so I worked for nonprofit organizations and the regional municipality assisting neighborhoods with crisis issues or development challenges to help support leadership and I would often use walking as a way of getting to know neighborhoods and so I spent a lot of time walking and talking with people in their communities and learned a lot about the way people view their neighborhoods and also how much people know about their communities. And it just became such a very organic and natural way of engaging, but also, I began to lead and host Jane’s Walks which are a series of free walking tours in Waterloo region.
I found ways to encourage people to lead a free walking tour in their neighborhood and it’s just such an engaging and fun way for people to learn something about the community where they live and to see a walking tour led by one of their neighbors.
What is your educational background?
My educational background is in social work and community development and so it’s working with neighborhoods and looking at the big picture for neighborhoods, looking at leadership development, looking at helping communities grow and evolve, looking at safety from a neighborhood perspective. I’ve worked with neighborhoods and at the physical space where people live have such an impact on the way people feel about their communities and walking and talking is a great way for people to get more connected to their local neighborhood.
What have ben some of the highlights of your business?
Some of my highlights really have been around people’s stories. I have met so many people in neighborhoods across our communities and people feel such a strong sense of attachment to where they live once they start to get to know their neighbors, once they get to know the histories and stories connected to their neighborhood. I’ve heard stories of people who have decided to locate or move to Kitchener-Waterloo because of the people that they’ve met and the events and places that they’ve connected to.
I hear that often in our walking tours as well is that people have a greater sense of belonging to their communities sometimes when they see their own histories reflected in the walking tours that we offer. Some of the other accomplishments and highlights that I’ve had particularly with Stroll have been around partnerships, working with other organizations or groups to realize walking tours that have been in the back of my mind for many years and to see them realized has been an exciting thing.
What have been some of the challenges that you have faced so far?
So, obviously one of the most significant challenges Stroll has faced obviously was the COVID-19 pandemic and it had an impact as I was just launching my business at the time but in the end it turned out to be a benefit to Stroll because outdoor small group activities were one of the only things that people could do and the walking tours helped people to feel like they were traveling in their own city at a time when we couldn’t be traveling anywhere else.
I guess one of the other challenges for Stroll has been that it’s a very small business and finding creative ways to grow and to market the business on very small budgets and small capacities has been an interesting and creative challenge and obviously finding unique ways to stand out among intense competition is always a challenge for a small business.
What methods have you used to grow your business?
I’ve been able to grow my business through some traditional and non-traditional methods. Obviously, networking has been significant and taking every opportunity to network at events also through the Chamber as a member, but also through networks that I’ve established over the past 20 years of working in Waterloo Region and tapping into those networks to share with them what I’ve started with Stroll Walking Tours. Also, word of mouth has been really significant for Stroll Walking Tours and because I have a strong network after working in the Region for 20-25 years people have been really gracious about spreading the word and telling their friends and colleagues and neighbors about Stroll Walking Tours and that’s been great for receiving referrals for group tours. I’ve also used a lot of mentorship and leadership opportunities.
Early in the pandemic, there was quite a lot of opportunity for women entrepreneurs and so I was able to take advantage of two programs one through RISE Ventures and another one through Wilfrid Laurier Women Entrepreneurship Centre and both of those had a course learning component and also a mentorship element to it that were really significant and my business would not be where it is today without both of those programs and the mentorship, but as well just the strong support of people within my networks to share about Stroll Walking Tours.
How do you define success?
Success to me and Stroll Walking Tours has really meant seeing our walking tour guests leave with a sense of excitement about something new that they’ve learned something that they didn’t know about our cities before and having an experience that has made them want to do more exploring or learn more. I really delight in seeing people engage and get connected to our communities in a unique way.
Success to me is also related to the fact that I’m having fun, I’m engaged, and I’m interested and motivated to continue following a direction or a project or an idea and success also is being inspired by how people respond to the projects and collaborative work that I’m involved in.
What are some of the core values of your business?
Some of the values that have been really important to Stroll and the way we incorporate them is connectedness, hyperlocal and belonging and connectedness I’ve mentioned this a couple times is that the more people learn about their neighborhood or city through people and places and stories and histories the more connected they feel to the place where they live and that connection can often lead to a feeling of a different sense of belonging. Often on walking tours people will discover a sense of connection to the stories or histories and sometimes they’ll see their own histories reflected in the stories on the walking tours which develops a different sense of belonging and connection in our cities.
Hyperlocal is important to us because all of our walking tour guides live in this community and our cities and they are deeply passionate about the walking tours that they lead and host. We focus on stories and people that are so unique to our cities that they can only be told here and there are stories that can’t be told in any other place because they are so deeply connected and rooted to the uniqueness of our community. All of these things hyperlocal, connectedness, sense of belonging plays out in the fact that we want to expand the way we talk about our regions and cities histories in that we want to talk about histories beyond just the white, European, German, Mennonite histories that are often told about our region but we want to make sure that we’re expanding and talking about the land, we’re talking about the history of the land, Indigenous communities and we’re also talking about people of colour. We launched a Black History Walking Tour in 2022 and that has been significant for Stroll to make sure that we’re featuring stories and peoples beyond the ones that are most familiar in our region and those help people to develop a sense of belonging when they can see their own histories reflected in the stories told on a walking tour.
What are some of your strategies for recruiting talent?
When I’m looking for new partners or walking tour guides, I’m looking for people who are passionate about a specific topic and who have really great research skills beyond a Google search. I’m always looking for people who know their way around archives and community resources and research work and who are also very comfortable talking to people and interviewing others to collect the stories that we include on our walking tours. I’m always looking for people who are really comfortable talking to groups outdoors and who can tell stories in really engaging ways and these are people that I’ve found within my own networks and over the course of the past five years I have met other people in our community who have said “I would love to do this and I would I think I have some really great stories that I would be able to contribute and tell in a walking tour.”
So we’ve been able to expand our walking tours from eight in the beginning and by the end of 2025 we’ll probably have about 15 or 16 walking tours led by local Waterloo Region guides.
How long are your tours?
Our walking tours are 90 minutes long and they usually cover anywhere from one and a half to two and a half kilometers and depending on the on the topic some of our food tours are three hours long and that’s so that we can stop, eat and talk with restaurant owners and so we are make our food tours three hours long so that we can cover more ground.
What have been some of the benefits of establishing your business in Waterloo Region?
One of the benefits of establishing Stroll Walking Tours here at Waterloo Region is simply the fact that I live here and I’ve lived here for several decades. When you know a place really well it can be very easy to get excited about that place and to engage other people in the stories and unique places that we have here. Also, because I’ve lived and worked in Waterloo Region for many years my network is quite established and it’s been very easy for me to be able to reach out to my networks and meet new people and get referrals to maybe resources or things that I need in order to grow something in my business and so it’s been great to be able to tap into the very connected network of Waterloo Region and so that part has been really easy about establishing a business.
What inspires you?
I am often inspired by creative endeavors: art, theater, artists, historians and I find those really energizing and they stimulate creative ideas in me as well. I find that I can often maybe resolve a challenge or an issue or look at something in a different way by exploring the art of others. I’m also really inspired by stories whether they’re the history of individuals or events and the people that have been involved in them and how people have maybe overcome adversity, or things that ways that people have lived extraordinary lives in very ordinary ways and I find that quite inspiring to see how people shape their lives.
I’m also inspired by our natural world, our farmland, our outdoor spaces because they’re something that is important in urban environments and I find them inspiring as a place where people gather but also as a place where people find respite and relaxation in outdoor spaces.
What advice would you give to other aspiring business owners?
Advice that I would give to aspiring entrepreneurs might be to talk to people. As you’re exploring a new idea for a business talk to as many people as you can think of. Not necessarily to review your ideas with others but to find out maybe what inspired them to start their own business, what challenges or failures they’ve overcome, what their greatest success has been in their business but just to talk to people about how they evolved into their business or their work but to get a really broad picture of inspiration.
Often it can be detrimental to be so laser focused on one idea that you can miss things around the edges that could be inspirational or that could give you a different perspective on how to go about your idea or your entrepreneurial dreams. So yes, I would suggest talk to as many people as you can and talk to them face to face. Videos and podcasts are online but there’s no substitute for having an in-person conversation with someone to be able to have that back-and-forth discussion with another human being.
What goals do you have for your business?
There are a couple goals that I have for Stroll in the future. There are a few additional walking tours that I want to add to our collection. Often local histories are told through the efforts of men and so I really want to add walking tours that feature women’s histories and we’re in the process of working with three guides at the moment and hoping to be able to launch a walking tour for women’s history, “women’s herstory” I should say, for Waterloo, Kitchener and Cambridge to have one tour in each city focused on women who are the movers and shakers.
So, individuals, events, movements and people in women in our region who have helped shaped our cities and our region more broadly. And there might be a few other walking tours that I want to add in the next year or two and we’ll see how that evolves.
Where can we find out more about your business?
People can find Stroll Walking Tours online at strollwalkingtours.com as well as through social media. Instagram and of course through the website and social media there are direct contacts to be able to reach me by email and by phone. I always love meeting people for a coffee or chat and a walk and talk is always a good opportunity too.
