RVE Ask Us Anything: Work From the Road, Automation, and Tech – RVE 318

Join the cohosts of The RV Entrepreneur podcast for a special Ask Us Anything episode.

On today’s show, Kimberly, Rose and Jim all share some behind-the-scenes details on what they’re currently working on, as well as answer listener questions including: 

• Where do you find jobs from the road?
• What hardware and software do you need to run a business from the road?
• Which campsites have the most reliable, business-class WiFi?

The RV Entrepreneur: Ask Us Anything

Working from the Road, Automation, and Technology

Your Hosts: Kimberly Crossland, Rose Willard, and Jim Nelson

Listen to The RV Entrepreneur Episode #318

Listen and subscribe to The RV Entrepreneur on Spotify or in your favorite podcast app. Or, read the full episode transcript below. Leave a comment, or contact us with any questions.

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THE RV ENTREPRENEUR
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The RV Entrepreneur #318 Full Episode Transcript:

RVE Ask Us Anything Edition
Working from the Road, Automation, and Technology

RVE318 November AMA.mp3

RV LIFE: Welcome to the RV Entrepreneur podcast. The weekly show for nomads, work campers, RV ers and entrepreneurs looking to earn a living or build a business while enjoying the RV lifestyle. This week’s host is Kimberly Crossland. Let’s settle in and enjoy the RV entrepreneur podcast brought to you by RV life.

KIMBERLY: Welcome back to another episode of the Entrepreneur Podcast. I am your host for this week, sort of Kimberly Crossland. And I say sort of because we’re actually doing an Ask Us Anything episode. This episode was so much fun to record because it’s very rare that me, Rose, and Jim get to sit in a room and talk business and we totally nerded out in this episode. It was a really fun one. We got lots of good takeaways, lots of lessons learned throughout the month, and also lots of questions answered from our community. So we are excited for you to dive in at the end of the episode. When you’re done listening, come on over to the Facebook group. Join us. Talk to us. Introduce yourself. We love rubbing virtual elbows with you and we would love to meet you. I know you’re going to absolutely love this episode, so let’s get right into it. But first, here is a word from one of our sponsors.

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KIMBERLY: We are so thrilled to be back with you. For another, Ask Me Anything of the podcast. It’s so rare that we get to sit in the same room, so before recording, we’re all just chit chatting because we couldn’t help but catch up with each other. It’s been so fun, but we have hit record so you guys can be part of our conversation. We’re so excited for this. We’re going to kick things off just with a little update for you, our listeners, so you can kind of get a behind the scenes on what we’re working on in our life. Because as you may know, we are all entrepreneurs ourselves. And so we are all kind of in the process of trying new things, building new things. And so, Jim, why don’t you kick us off?

JIM: Certainly. Thank you. It’s great to be in the same virtual room because we are literally all across this country. I’m currently in Alaska. You’re in Phoenix area, East Coast, but what I’ve been working on lately, it feels like kind of juggling cats. I wear lots of hats on the RV life side. We’re ramping things up with getting blog content production going at the Entrepreneur.com slash news, wearing my live work dream hat. I’m finally getting some content out there about the custom build out I did for our Project Truck Topper Camper, which we’re not currently using in Alaska in the snow. And then on the tripod side, our dog Nellie doesn’t walk very far with a carpal flexion contracture. It’s a bum leg, basically. So we got her a new stroller, and it’s the first one we could find that actually has a ski conversion kit. So we’re doing some more product partnerships there.

KIMBERLY: How fun! I can’t wait to see more about those product partnerships. And that sounds like she’s living her best life. Just having the skis and everything. That sounds great. And you guys are an eight inches of snow, you said. Is that right?

JIM: Yes. It pretty much started snowing for real. And it’s what, November 7th? This snow will probably not melt until June.

KIMBERLY: That’s impressive. Being from Arizona, I think that’s very impressive. Well, Rose, you’re kind of in the middle of both of us, weather wise. So why don’t you give us an update on how beautiful it is? We can live vicariously through you, where you are and also what you’re working on.

ROSE: Yeah. So I’m in Delaware. Delaware is not that interesting, but it is warmer today about 70 degrees, so we’re happy with that. Been outside a little bit today. But for the past seven months, my husband and I have really been focusing more on our website at Reset Your journey.com and stepping up our SEO game and blogging more and collaborating a little bit more with other sites. And it’s grown immensely and it’s going very well. But right now, at this moment, we’re working on adding some coaching, consulting video calls for individuals that are wanting to get into the full time RV life life. And we added the coaching video calls at first on a donation base, and that was going really well. So we decided and we just launched to do it as a fee based for that hour to to do that. And it’s going pretty well at first here. So we’ll see how it shapes up.

JIM: So you’re still seeing a lot of our viewers needing assistance or turning to someone experienced.

ROSE: Yeah. So we had and I’ll be interviewing them shortly actually they’ve been on the road for about six months now, and they are ones that came to us initially and they knew a little bit about the RV thing, but they sold everything and they were wanting some more RV advice and specifically boondocking advice. And that’s kind of where our niche has gravitated towards is more boondocking. But we’ve acquired a lot of skills and knowledge for our RVing in general. So they picked our brain. We went back and forth a bit, and they’re out there and loving it and enjoying it. And I’m going to interview them because they have a nonprofit that they are working from the road. And then recently we just had another individual that with his girlfriend, they were new, not much about RV life. So we kind of had to go over some things more awesome. It’s been so much fun.

KIMBERLY: That is really fun. I love that relationship building and how you started off with buy for donation only. That’s I don’t know. I think that’s really a cool approach. I think that’s really fun. Yeah, I feel like you guys, I’m wearing 10,000 different hats, juggling cats like you said. Jim, I like that analogy. That’s a fun way to think of it, and it feels very accurate. So I took the summer off essentially to kind of simplify my business and simplify my lifestyle, because I think that that’s important for all of us living the RV lifestyle we like simple and easy, and to be able to be out there and and exploring. So I don’t know that I’ve fully accomplished that yet, but I closed the doors on my signature course for a lot of reasons, which we can get into in another episode or not another day. But I now pulling together more on demand courses, and I’ve got some intentionality behind that, really leaned into my newsletter, just did my episode about that on the RV entrepreneur podcast. You guys can go back and listen if you’d like. That’s been really fun. And I have to tell you that writing is where I feel the most alive, and it’s been really cool just to feel that energy again of like, oh, this is exciting and like up at 3 a.m., like, I’ve got all these ideas, I just want to share them.

KIMBERLY: So it’s been really fun and exciting, actually. And speaking of writing, I’m also tomorrow my very first book comes out on Amazon, so I’m really thrilled for that. It’s very exciting to be able to add author to my title. I’m really, really excited, a lifelong dream. And then I’ve also been leaning into my product based business, cruising and campfires quite a bit. I’ve got new designs coming out, just introduced Swedish Dishcloths, which is a fun product for our viewers specifically because any time you can save counter space, it’s always a good thing. So I’m all over the board, but it’s all very fun and very exciting. Good, good. Okay, so I wanted to kind of jump in from what we’re currently working on to lessons learned, because throughout all of our experiences, there’s always lessons that come up for us. So again, let’s just start with you, Jim. We’ll just continue in that same order. That seems like it worked out well. What is a lesson that’s popped up for you recently that you’ve learned?

JIM: So the one lesson that really struck out when I first heard this is relative to being in Alaska and more of an RV ING lifestyle thing, and it’s that there is no bad weather, only bad gear. And someone up here, one of the people that you know, the reason we came here told us that and I get it now. I have been outside in eight degree temperature for a run and been comfortable because I had the right gear. So my lesson learned is no bad weather, only bad gear. And I think that relates to business as well. There’s really no bad projects, there’s only bad preparation. So if you have the right tech stack or the right technology gear and the right tools and the right apps, you can be prepared for whatever your business throws at you.

KIMBERLY: That’s so good. That’s so good. I love that because it’s so true. And there’s everything out there. I mean, business is easier than ever, in a way. I mean, it can feel overwhelming because there are so many different apps. But yeah, what a good point. I love how you tied that back to gear. Very good, very insightful. Rose, how about you?

ROSE: I agree 100%, and we hear that a lot. Like with kids and growing up and getting them outside, there’s definitely no bad weather, just bad gear. Uh, you need to get those kids out all the time. Even in that weather. That’s not pleasant sometimes. But anyways, so the lesson that I have learned recently in regards to putting up these coaching calls that we’re learning that we need to develop a pre-formatted type questionnaire to send to the participant prior to this initial meeting, because we don’t really know off the bat too much about their prior knowledge of the thing with their budget, all that. So for example, asking what their current knowledge base of being is, what their budget will be, what’s their camping style, you know, RV parks, boondocking and so on. That way it gives us a feel for what kind of information they’re looking for, and it can help make our meeting more efficient. So that’s what we’re working on right now.

JIM: So are you developing like an intake form and then have some sort of onboarding process. So you’re actually more prepared with that first call. And it saves everyone time. Yes.

ROSE: Yes it does. Correct.

JIM: Wonderful.

KIMBERLY: I think that makes so much sense. And I like that it’s a lot of efficiency built into it. So you guys have really similar lessons in that. That makes a lot of sense. Awesome.

JIM: How about you.

KIMBERLY: Thank you. Yeah. My big lesson learned recently has been how important relationships are in all areas. So I’ve been kick starting different small little pockets of conversations with people. So I’ve got like one little voxer thread with a couple of product creators in the space. Got another one with course creators, and I’ve got another one with newsletter creators and just being able to pick their brain about and just go back and forth strategically and share your ideas and network in a way that’s a little bit more organic. It’s not, you know, super structured and, and whatnot has been really powerful. And really it makes you feel a whole lot less alone, because the RV lifestyle can sometimes feel a little bit lonely and isolating, and the entrepreneurial lifestyle can also feel a little bit lonely and isolating. Which is why I love this podcast, because you hear everyone’s different stories and you can kind of feel like, okay, I’m not alone in that. And other people have faced that same hurdle and they’ve gotten through it, and you can brainstorm different ways to get through it. And so my big lesson beyond the collaborations is just because you can doesn’t always mean you should. And a lot of times when you’re having these conversations or you’re working in a silo, you can think, oh, I should do that, I should do that. They’re doing this, so maybe I should try that. And that looks cool. I could do that. I should do it. But you shouldn’t always do that. So having those people in your corner who are like, hold on, let’s rethink this. Do you really need to be adding that to your plate right now is very helpful and very valuable, and just someone to kind of talk through it with. So you’re not living in your head all the time. You can kind of get out of your own head, which is really nice.

JIM: I can totally relate to that because I’ve been in similar situations. When we were first hitting the road and trying to make more money, we spread ourselves way too thin. We tried to do too many things at once, and none of no one of them got done very well until we kind of honed in on our purpose and our passion and got that one iron in the fire glowing really hot and blew on it and lit that fire. Things worked out much better once we kind of focused, and it took community to do that, like a mentoring group and getting in with groups of people to kind of keep you accountable for what you’re doing there. So I can totally relate.

KIMBERLY: Yeah, I actually heard a story recently. I read it in a book called essentialism. Very good book. Highly recommend it. But it was a story about Southwest Airlines, and when they very first got started, they broke all the rules. They did not look sideways. They just said, you know what? We’re not going to serve meals. We’re going to do point to point destinations, and we are not going to have first class people are going to be able to pick their own seats. And it was so new in the airline industry, but they ended up seeing year over year success and growth. And so then continental stepped in. They’re like, well, we should do something like that. But instead of switching entirely to that business model and just focusing on that one direction, they added it on and they ended up doing worse because now they had like this offer that was kind of southwest like over here, plus their other offer that was like the traditional industry, and they ended up just kind of trying to be too many places at one time that nothing ever quite worked out. It’s just interesting to see that history in the business world too. Well, I digress, let’s jump into some questions from our community. Speaking of community, Karen is up first. So Karen asked us this. I’m really excited to dive into this one. Where do you all find jobs on the road? So, Jim, do you want to start us off? Because you got lots of ideas and I like it.

JIM: I have tons of ideas and I don’t want to dominate this. Rose, you mentioned some quick ideas that you had on the subject, because I want to go on and on about this.

ROSE: Well, first, like we all kind of mentioned before we started recording was there are different definitions of jobs. There’s lots of jobs, right? You could be an employee working for others remotely. You could freelance and have clients. There’s a cool site that I just came across recently called Cool Works.com, and we’ll put that in the show notes. So many opportunities there. Every category you can think of by state season, national parks, cool regions, jobs with houses. So I thought that was really cool. There’s some side gigs, you know, depending on what you’re skilled at photography, artwork, crafts. Just go with what you’re passionate about and dive into that. Being an entrepreneur or work camping. Jim, take that away.

KIMBERLY: Good segway.

JIM: Gladly. Yeah, and the reason I didn’t want to jump in and go first is I know we shy away from blatant promotion self-promotion on this podcast, but I have to mention the book my wife Renee, and I wrote and published launched the fourth edition of it in 2022, called Income Anywhere, and we cover this in great detail. I manage the Work Campers group on Facebook that has grown to more than 120,000 members, and the definition of work camping. We talk about in a past episode with Executive Director of Work Camper News. But the definition has changed over the years. If you’re working and camping, you could consider yourself a work camper. So in our book, we in this latest edition of it, we really dove in and kind of defined all those different types of jobs. So when Karen asked, you know, where do you find jobs? My reply was, what do you mean by job? So there’s typical remote employment and someone might want a job, a steady job with benefits that they can work from anywhere. And referring to the resources in the book, I’m just going to, you know, if you want a job, LinkedIn’s a place to go. I mean, there’s a great network there. There’s typical job boards like Monster.com, ZipRecruiter, upward, but there’s also some specifically targeted at remote employment, which you can Google to get there. But Remote Echo is exclusively remote jobs and resources for remote employees, so is remotely possible. And it’s actually remotely possible tech. And we’ll throw a bunch of these notes in links in the show notes. But then there’s things like career builder, if you want just a remote job, basically go to a job board and filter it by remote.

JIM: Indeed flex jobs you mentioned cool works grow remotely is another one that is for remote workers only and could go on and on. But this is all about typical kind of remote employment. And there’s a couple that we highlight specifically for our viewers. So publications people have seen the little maps in the campgrounds. They’re always hiring our RVers because our viewers are always going around. We’ve known a couple that went to RV campgrounds, sold the ads, produced the artwork, and that’s and southeast, those are two different publications that do those map products. So that’s a great sales and graphic production type of job. Hipcamp is another one that will actually pay people to go photograph unique places. And if you’ve got a drone, National Air Views is another one as well. But let’s say you don’t want a job. You may be a little more entrepreneurial, but you aren’t necessarily the entrepreneur type. There’s plenty of profit sharing and direct marketing businesses out there, and there are legitimate, you know, consumer direct marketing type businesses. And there are MLM type scams. So we kind of covered like how to identify a scam versus a legit job. But there’s websites like MLM watch or Quackwatch.org and Money Crashers. Dot com also covers MLMs versus pyramid schemes, so they can be a great way to be remotely employed and still work for yourself. And there are legit ones out there, but you really need to know what to do to do your homework there. And if there’s some buzzwords out there, like if they’re saying you can get rich quick, it’s going to be a scam, or if you want to get in on the ground floor, those are kind of some buzzwords that might want to make you run and do some more homework.

JIM: But we mentioned talent marketplaces. So if you’re a creative type or a developer type, there’s plenty of, you know, job boards out there specifically for people looking to hire for projects, whether website development or artwork. Development, things like 99 designs. Some of these do tend to lowball on the pricing side, but if you’re good at what you do and you can do it fast and cheap, then you might make up for that in volume. Fiverr and Upwork are kind of the top marketplaces. Fiverr is, you know, they were built on, you know, $5 projects, but that turns into a $500 project once you start adding things on Upwork is a little more higher scale professional employee marketplace. But there’s things like design crowd or design contest or logo my way that people that if they’re quick and fast and can get in there and and offer those services, the talent marketplaces are the good way to go because there’s plenty of those out there. Stackoverflow for development type jobs. And then I interviewed a photographer recently. We’ve had a couple of photographers on the podcast selling photography. There’s plenty of marketplaces out there for selling photography, and I think it all kind of boils down to what do you mean by job on the entrepreneur? You might be looking for clients instead. So Kimberly, you’re mentioning like, where do you go to find clients? But I’d rephrase that as like how and what tools might you use to do that?

KIMBERLY: Yeah, that’s a lot of really good websites. You guys both had great answers. Well, I’ll I’ll speak to the client side of things because I do find that I often just have jobs landing in my lap. And I don’t say that in a, in a weird way, but it’s because I’ve worked really hard to build relationships over time. And I made it very clear I do copywriting. I’m very good at writing, I’m very good at writing sales copy, and so people just know me for that. And so whenever that comes up, that seems to be something that people don’t love to do very often. So when it comes up, I’m offered jobs, which is nice. And that’s a really great way to to build that network. I talked about networking and collaboration earlier, and that’s been probably my biggest lead generation source. So I would say to start, if you’re looking for a jobs around something very specific, those websites are all very good places to start, but also chat with other people, get to know other people, and do so with a heart of just being open to receiving whatever they’re going to give, but also to giving it right back and giving more than you take. Because when you do that, people will remember you more. First off, people always remember the ones that gave them jobs or offered them positions and and send them clients, but also do so in a way that you’re just like, ready for everybody to win.

KIMBERLY: And when you have that approach and that mindset of everybody can make money, this is not a competition mindset. You really can can grow very quickly that way. It’s a very it’s a much less tactical than what you were just offering. And I know it feels a little bit fluffy, but I promise you that word of mouth marketing is huge and it works, and it just comes from being human. And so I’ll wrap it up by saying another really good way. I mean, get into conversation with people. Absolutely, yes. But also put yourself out there and share what you’re good at. Start your newsletter, start your podcast, start your blog, start creating content, talking about it and letting people hear you. Be enthusiastic about the thing that lights you up inside. That’s like a moth to a flame. People love to be drawn to others enthusiasm and feed off of that energy, and they’re way more likely to hire you and remember you when they need that job. When you’re putting yourself out there and being excited about what you offer. So I would say you guys already offered such a really good resources, but form those relationships, build your community, and also put yourself out there and create that content because it’s fun. It is fun.

ROSE: Yeah, I couldn’t agree 100% more when.

JIM: It comes to content creation in particular. I mean, that’s a huge market and you may have a niche, but there’s groups out there like content creators, Facebook groups, other community groups that you can get involved with. And it leads me to remember a term I learned long ago. Co-opetition. You know, we’re always thinking we’re going to be competitive and we got to go up against the oh, they’re in my same niche and I’ve got to compete with them. You know what, get to know those people. Cooperate with them, see if you might be able to do something together or at least learn from each other. So competition instead of cooperation and competition, you know, there’s something there too. You know, it all comes back to that community.

KIMBERLY: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. I also think that when you do that so often, you’re going to find that people are creating some really cool things and you don’t have to reinvent the wheel another way you can find money. This isn’t quite a job like Karen was asking, but you can find pockets of money when you build your audience and you can offer products as an affiliate for those products so you really, truly believe in. Don’t just offer them to offer them because that’s sleazy and we don’t like that. But if you really, truly stand behind it, then go and offer it and you guys can split the profits. Like I said, expansion. Everybody can make money. It’s fun. One of my favorite things to do is pay my affiliates because I’m like, thank you. That was awesome that you sent people my way. And at the same, I also love to get my. Affiliate income because I’m like, yes, somebody really cool just got into this awesome program and now I just feel really good about that. I’m hands off, but it feels really good. I made that connection for them, so it works all around.

JIM: I hope to do an episode on affiliate marketing in the future because everyone wants to know, how can I make money off my blog? How can I make money off my videos? The answer is it takes time. You know, I’ve been doing it quite a while and it took, you know, a few years to even like kind of hone the direction. But our tripods niche community is, you know, driven by affiliate sales and products and partnerships, and those things take time. But you can also test them, put all those different irons in the fire, and whichever one glows, start blowing on it. And that’s the one you focus on. And eventually things will ramp up.

ROSE: Yeah, yeah, that’s where my husband and I are in that initial early stages of that website and some affiliate and ad income and all that stuff.

JIM: So it can be overwhelming. And that’s why you need to turn to the entrepreneur community and find those people that you think are competitors and team up with them and and not just try and figure out what what they’re doing to, you know, do what they’re doing, but, you know.

ROSE: Collaborate.

KIMBERLY: Yes. Collaboration over competition. Always, always, always always I love it.

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KIMBERLY: All right, for the sake of time, let’s continue our conversation and we’re going to go to. We had a couple of questions. Jump in from Maryland and from John about specifically. Well, let’s talk about this one for Maryland. First. It’s specifically about technology and connectivity. So I’ll read it. And then Rose you just had a good episode. So I want you to start with your answer on this one. So Maryland says, since I will soon start to travel and work remotely, perhaps cover the technical aspects of working remotely, such as Wi-Fi connectivity. Latest Wi-Fi hardware. Cetera. Et cetera.

ROSE: All right. So first of all, for our family of four being on the road, we use two laptops for blogging, uploading videos to our YouTube channel and streaming movies and some of our boys schoolwork, and then also to tablets for streaming games, whatever. So we use an unlimited and I do air quotes for unlimited AT&T hotspot. And I say that because I don’t think there’s truly an unlimited plan. But although we definitely pushed it to the max, never really had a problem. But we got that hotspot from Fmca Family Motor Coach Association and it costs about $60 a month. So that’s what we use. And I just did a not recently, but I did do an interview with Jess Jorgenson of Go Roam Tech. And she offers reliable, flexible Wi-Fi built for remote corporate professionals so people that need this seamless, uninterrupted, guaranteed Wi-Fi. She offers wonderful packages for that entrepreneurs, business owners, everyone. And it can integrate with Starlink and Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T, Cellular One, all that stuff. And this is very rugged, rugged gear. So that’s something that I, our family will look into in the future. But I did that episode. We’ll put that link in the show notes too.

KIMBERLY: Yes, definitely a good one to listen to. Jim, what’s your setup like?

JIM: I’ll come back to my no bad business, only bad gear. And it’s about being prepared. When we first hit the road, we knew we were going to want to boondock, and so we looked into satellite internet and that was 2007. So it was literally a satellite internet dish and auto deployed thing on our roof. But we learned quickly that, you know, people ask me all the time, oh, what’s the best internet on the road? And my answer is redundancy. So yeah, we had satellite internet. We had multiple mobile hotspot devices and cellular phones. And I’m going to take a quick detour, maybe down a little rabbit hole here to address the whole Wi-Fi thing, because I always get that in. What’s the best Wi-Fi on the road? And this might lead into the final question, but there’s a big difference between Wi-Fi and internet access Wi-Fi and cellular, broadband Wi-Fi and satellite internet. The Wi-Fi is the network you use in your rig to connect to your internet device, or the campground’s Wi-Fi that you would connect to. People tend to get those things confused. At least in my work campus group, they say, what’s the best Wi-Fi? Well, the one that sits on your counter is the best. Getting on the internet requires.

JIM: The majority of people are, you know, cellular broadband connection through a hotspot or a cellular phone. And then there’s satellite internet connections. And the most popular one now is Starlink. But when it comes to the air quotes around the unlimited plan, real quick explanation that I deal with a lot is people who have, say, an iPad with Wi-Fi or a cell phone. There you go. A iPad with cellular broadband, built in a cellular plan, or an iPhone, or an Android with a cellular plan. And that device you hold in your hand may be unlimited for the bandwidth it uses. Once you connect a personal hotspot to another device, that bandwidth is not unlimited. So when you’re using it as a hotspot, you can very easily get throttled on the devices connected to the device and then still have decent internet on the device. So I kind of went round and round to kind of explain a few things there, but my answer is that the technology needs to be redundant. We currently no longer have we downsized our rigs, so we no longer have a satellite internet connection, but we’ve got one, two, three, at least three different four broadband devices that we can connect to at any given time.

KIMBERLY: Wow, that’s a lot. It’s a lot. That’s good. I like redundancy, though. That’s important to have your backups.

JIM: Yeah, bandwidth is really important too. So the bandwidth issue is really important because it the best technology for you meets your needs. Those video content creators who are uploading gigabyte files or streaming lots of video when they’re reviewing the stuff, they’re going to eat up a lot more bandwidth than, say, the writer, or maybe even the developer who isn’t passing a lot of data over those plans. So what is the best technology? It’s the one that works for you. And to determine that, you’ve got to do your homework. What kind of bandwidth do you use and where do you want to go? Because if you want to get way off the grid, the only option is going to be satellite internet. But Kimberly, how about you?

KIMBERLY: Well have a different answer than both of you, because I’m not going to talk about hardware. That is. I’m not great with hardware, admittedly, but what I am really good at is with software. And so, as you probably know, if you’ve listened to the podcast for a while, I’m more of the messy middle River. So when we go off grid, we go off grid for a long time. And what I’ve done and what I’m redoing in my business and how I’m setting things up, is to make it so that I can go off grid and take that time away and really step away and have things still automatically being delivered. So, for example, my courses are all automatically delivered. If you buy it, you’re going to get the course. I don’t have to be there to hand it over to you and facilitate that transaction. With my product based business, I do drop shipping and I hire someone to help me ship if I’m out of town so they can take the order, just package it up and get it out the door. All my inventories are set. If it’s sold out, then it’s sold out. That has not yet been a problem because I stock up enough ahead of time because, you know, you can predict how much you’re going to sell when you’re on the road.

KIMBERLY: And so I try and really log off as much as I can so that I can really lean into the RV lifestyle more just because we are not full timers. If we’re full timers, of course it’d be a different story, and I’d be going back and listening to Rose and Jim, your advice on the different setups and all of that. But for me, I really like to design it so I can have that real time away. Because as entrepreneurs, I don’t think we get enough of a vacation that also, by the way, also lets you have a sick day now and then. You know, sometimes we get sick and if you’re reliant on always having to show up for your business, you don’t get to go and like binge some trashy TV show. Please tell me I’m not the only one who likes reality TV. I love reality TV. But you can have those moments where you’re like, I just need a day to, like, catch my breath and and heal and just be human for a little bit. Entrepreneurs are allowed to have that. So I like when you when you talk about being able to travel and work remotely and the technical aspects, hardware is one of them. But I’d also look at the software that can automate things.

KIMBERLY: So to get specific, I use Thrive Cart for my checkout and my course deliverables. That way it’s all tied together. I have my website over on Show It, and I use ConvertKit to do the automated delivery of the emails. My newsletter, by the way, to Save money, is actually over on Substack, so I’ll frequently and this I do manually export them from ConvertKit and put them in when they don’t need those automations anymore. And then I go put them in the Substack newsletter. So I’m not paying for thousands of subscribers that may or may not be opening my email. We can use Substack for that. I do get pretty good open rates, so I shouldn’t say it like that, but it is nice to to let that, because Substack you only pay for when someone pays you for your newsletter. There’s no cap on the maximum number of subscribers you can have, so it’s almost like a free platform that allows you to make money. So that’s a little side note, but the automation, there’s no automations over there. So I do automate everything through ConvertKit. That way you can do the sequences and things like that. And then save some money. So I hope that was helpful even though it was not technical technical.

JIM: But it was. You had a great episode all about Substack, which is a, you know, a really deep dive on that for anyone who wants to go there. But I think you mentioned something about automation, which is really important, and want to talk about unplugging for a minute. I mean, we’re our viewers first, right? Or maybe we’re our entrepreneurs first, but we enjoy this lifestyle for a reason. We want to get out. I envy you to go unplug for weeks at a time, or however long you go for, and I may be able to take a day off here and there, because I do have certain automations in place and automated things. Not to be confused with email automations, which could be a whole episode in itself, but the way we automate certain things at entrepreneur and in our own niche things are tools like if, if, this, then that, and Zapier. These are platforms that can get things done quicker and help you. So I’m all about the automating things and getting to unplug. So Rose, do you have any ways that kind of remind you to unplug? I’m a head space fan and Nike Run Club fan. What do both of you do to unplug? Let’s get away from the tech for just a second.

ROSE: Uh, yeah. So currently right now we’re in a house. We’re at my in-laws, so I love to cook and bake, so I get to unplug. I like to use my hands and really get into something hands on that really allows my brain to kind of get out of my head and focus on the task at hand. And so I really enjoy that. But when I’m on the road to unplug, I like to just give myself a reward. I get to that reward and I just I get outside and I go hike with my family or just be outside and take a walk or do my my exercises outside as well.

KIMBERLY: I love that I do pretty much the same. I like mountain biking and hiking and just. Breathing fresh air. I don’t think we appreciate it enough. And I just are standing out in the sun, or just hanging out around the campfire and allowing yourself to leave the phone in the in the rig for a little bit. And no one can bother you. You’re just there and you’re present and you’re fully present in the moment. And I think that’s important. Okay. So we were kind of leading into that. That was a nice detour. I didn’t want to get out of that calm space. We were kind of leading into our last question though here, and it came from John, and it’s a good question. He says, I need to know which RV sites have reliable business class Wi-Fi. I cannot chance going somewhere and not being able to work when I need to. So, I mean, we kind of just answered that a little bit, but let’s go a little bit deeper on it. Who wants to start?

JIM: Oh well, honestly, I’m sorry John, but I kind of laughed when I heard the term business class wi fi at an RV park. And the only way you’re going to get that is if you provide it yourself. Rv parks are so hit and miss. Most of them don’t invest in their wi fi infrastructure. Rewind a bit to learn the difference between that and cellular broadband or an internet connection. But we learned early on redundancy is the best solution for mobile internet. So if you’re going to have business class requirements, you need to provide your own business class Wi-Fi and broadband connection, whether that’s satellite or a cellular broadband device. Just don’t rely on RV parks. If you’re going to work on the road, you’re going to be finding yourself at libraries McDonald’s all the time. And that just doesn’t work if you’re going to run a business.

ROSE: Well, I have to agree with all that. We learned early on as well. Cannot rely on RV parks campgrounds. Nada. Well, and.

KIMBERLY: Especially for you, Rose, because, Jim, you were talking about this earlier. It depends on what you’re uploading. And, Rose, you guys have a YouTube channel and so you’re uploading a lot of video.

ROSE: Yeah, I can remember too. We were in Nevada. We were at Great Basin National Park, and we just could not find a good enough, you know, connection to upload video. And so we finally had to drive around a bit and actually at the welcome center for the park, the actual, you know, where you go in first they had some decent. So we sat in the parking lot and uploaded from there. So we learned and then got a hotspot and even that I mean that’s that’s not the best. So.

JIM: So John asked a very specific question which RV sites have the best Wi-Fi or best internet? If you are relying on an RV park, you want to be at the site closest to the antenna or the office, or invest in a Wi-Fi booster different than a cellular booster. You also want to have a cellular broadband booster, like a Wii booster. Something like that if you’re. Yeah, we have that enjoying going off the grid a bit and that will increase the business class of whatever internet you do get.

KIMBERLY: Yes. All good points. Well, I’m going to point you to we will leave you with one RV site that does have reliable business class Wi-Fi. I can attest to it because this is a campground that we had the RV Entrepreneur Roundtable at in 2022. It was a fantastic site and I cannot wait to go back there again. The owners are phenomenal and they have really designed it to be for exactly what you’re looking for. John. There. It’s all about offering co-working space, fast Wi-Fi. They’ve really designed the interior. Beautifully done. You can have those small rooms to record podcasts, or you can have wide open co-working spaces to collaborate and connect like we’re already talking about. And this is the Campers hub. They’re not a sponsor of the show. We just love them because they hosted us and they’re a great campground. So I know that there’s probably others that are similar to that, but that’s one specifically that I know is designed just for what you’re looking for, where they have that high speed Wi-Fi and also the beautiful outdoors. I mean, Colorado, it’s a Montrose, Colorado. You just can’t beat Colorado. I love Colorado, so they are a great campground. The campers have will also link to them in the show notes. So you have all these links to go to in the show notes. Well, I think that’s it for us on this. Ask me anything. Do you guys have anything you want to wrap up with before we close out?

JIM: I just want to add one thing real quick, and that is to drop by the new and improved the RV Entrepreneur.com subscribe to get updates, because we are all going to start contributing to that news blog providing tips. I’m going to have a new series called How We Do It. Kind of dig under the hood on certain things that we do, and we will be having some sort of gathering again, if not two, in the coming year or so. So subscribe for updates at the Entrepreneur.com, check out the news blog. We’ll be adding resources there, and you can also find all episodes with complete transcripts, thanks to automations I’ve put in place, which I’ll write about in the future.

KIMBERLY: Perfect, I love it! What a great way to wrap us up. Go check out that website. It’s awesome and it’s fun and it’s full of really good content. You guys are going to love it. Can’t wait to hear about it. Why don’t you come and share a favorite episode or a favorite article from looking at that website over in our Facebook group. So we are also all hanging out over there in the Facebook group. We’d love to connect and collaborate and continue this community building over there in the Entrepreneur Facebook group. So come find us there as well. Also linked to in the show notes, so you can definitely go check those out. It was great to be with you guys. Thank you for jumping on I love these. Ask me anything because I get to hang out with such cool people. Thanks for being here.

ROSE: It was a lot of fun. I always enjoy these conversations with you guys.

JIM: Thank you so much. And it’s an ask us anything, but that just doesn’t sound right with the whole AMA popularity.

KIMBERLY: So exactly as AUA. Thank you guys.

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The RV Entrepreneur is presented by RV Life – Tools that Make Camping Simple
https://rvlife.com

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