Hey!

Heath here, writing to you from our home in Colorado. A place I thought would be experiencing late spring weather, but winter has decided it needs to stick around longer this year. Seriously, it's almost mid-May, and it was 29 degrees last night!?

But I'm not writing you to complain about the weather. That is only 8% of the reason I'm sending this email. I needed to vent my frustration at pulling out my heavy jacket.

The other 92% is to share an update from us and what new things are happening in our lives. If you think that is boring, you can skip to the last section, where I share a big lesson I've learned lately that's shaken up our life plans.

Before the rest of the newsletter, a quick note: We are hiring more writers for our RV Inspiration site. If you're a writer interested in a paid gig, respond to this email below!

Okay, why am I sharing a personal update?

We've covered a lot of topics since we started this email list in 2014.

Full-time RVing.

Making our first documentary about me working a job in all 50 states.

Starting a software company.

Building a campground.

Buying a new business.

Learning to travel with kids.

RVing everywhere around the world that we can.

And while the topics have changed, the goal has always stayed the same: To share honest lessons from our experiences in business, travel, and life.

Said another way, we like to chase after big and crazy dreams and then share what worked or didn't work.

As the topics have changed, many people subscribed to this email list have moved on or left. However, the ones who have stayed have often reached out to us and said something along the lines of:

"I started following you guys when you did your Hourly America documentary (or New Zealand series or Alyssa's book or insert project here) and enjoy sticking around to see what you do next."

These are some of my favorite emails to receive. I love reading them because they make me feel we aren't on the journey alone. Like we have friends all over the world who are on our team and eager to be on this crazy path alongside us.

With this in mind, I wanted to take a step back and share some of our life & business plans for the coming year. If you decide to stick around, you can see how some of these projects unfold over the next year.

In this email, I'll share the following:

• What our travel plans are for 2024 and early 2025
• Business & projects we are currently working on
• Recent lessons for me

Travel Plans

A week ago, Alyssa and I sat in front of a blank dry-erase board.

We'd just driven up from Texas to Colorado, and after catching our breath for a day, it was time to make more travel plans.

We've always been very fluid people when it comes to life plans. One day we're building a campground and the next we're selling it and I'm biking across Italy.

But I'm not sure we've ever had so few plans as we did last week. Everything was up in the air (business, life, travel, all of the above).

We talked about the life we wanted to give our kids, the types of projects we wanted to work on, and the community we wanted to be a part of.

Then, as we like to say, we made the decision that helped inform the next 100 decisions.

A Year of Boundless Life

We decided to spend our next year doing Boundless Life in Greece & Italy with our kids. If you're not familiar, we did a world school program called Boundless Life in Portugal last fall (I recently shared a mega 6,000 review on our experience).

While the program had ups and downs, there were a few things we loved about it:

1. The ability to slow travel as a family
2. Building a community of like-minded people
3. Our kids in a wonderful & safe school

We also met some amazing people in this program and it's something we're excited to continue.

Summer Plans

Outside our Boundless cohorts, we'll travel through Ireland, Austria, and Germany this summer (and maybe Scotland!).

We haven't booked an RV trip since touring across the UK last August. So it's on my to-do list to find an RV rental company somewhere in Scotland or Ireland that we could hire for a trip around (if you know of one, let me know!).

I asked people on Facebook what would be a top recommended place for us to RV to next and so many people told us Ireland and Scotland, so we're going to try and make it happen!

Hopefully, the roads will be less stressful than Wales last summer 😂.

Winter Plans?!

Because of visa restrictions, we'll need to find a spot to land for the winter outside of Europe.

One place that's been on our list for years is Australia. We've come so close during our visits to New Zealand that it's a shame we haven't adventured around this amazing country.

So at the top of our list for winter is to spend January - March doing a campervan trip around Australia.

This plan is 25% baked, and by writing it down, I am actively trying to convince Alyssa that we should do it. She said she could be convinced if we found people to caravan with us... (hint hint: if you're reading this and open to an RV trip around Australia, let us know! Road trips are always more fun with friends).

Work Projects

If you've followed us for the past year, you know that we bought RV Inspiration & Renovated RVs for Sale marketplace a year and a half ago.

It continues to grow despite Google updates that seem to be tanking content websites left and right.

In the first 16 months, we've paid off 80% of what we purchased it for.

These sites are primarily Alyssa's focus, but we've recently hired more contractors to help remove her from writing so much.

Side note: We are hiring more writers, so if you are interested in writing for RV Inspiration, reply to this email. We'd love to have you join the team!

Emotional Runway book

This winter, I started writing a book on Emotional Runway.

In short, Emotional Runway will be a book on tackling big ideas and businesses without burning out.

In 2020 I hit a wall of burnout with Campground Booking where I wanted to quit. The business I created wasn't the one I wanted to run anymore, and I was ready to leave it all behind. However, if I had done that, I would have sold it for nothing, leaving our customers, team, and co-founder high and dry.

So, instead of quitting, I spent the next year trying to create a business I loved. I figured out what things in the business gave me energy and spent more time doing that stuff and less on what took my energy. I tried to do the same in my personal life.

The concept of an emotional runway is something I think about almost daily, and it's helped me so much.

I aim to put it together in a book and release it later this fall. If you're reading this and interested, I'd love to send you an advance copy and hear your thoughts (reply to this email and let me know).

Another business acquisition

We closed on another business acquisition this week! If you follow the world of content-based sites, right now is either a horrible or a great time to buy a content website. The Google Helpful Content Update hit a lot of bloggers pretty hard last fall.

However, since we've almost paid off our last acquisition, we thought, why not add one more?

We decided to buy another website for a few reasons:

• We like writing and doing the required work to grow media sites
• They require very little maintenance, meetings, or customer support while we're traveling (AKA they run while we are not actively working on them)
• They cash flow and bring in money monthly.

We will fold this site into our "portfolio" (it feels weird to call it that, but I guess 3 sites is now considered a portfolio).

The website is called RVObsession.com.

We purchased it from a nice Aussie and Kiwi couple looking to move on to another project. It overlaps some with RV Inspiration regarding content but focuses more on RV layouts, newly manufactured units hitting the market, etc.

With a blog name like RV Obsession, there are endless opportunities for articles and things to write about. (Again, we are looking to build a writing team! If this sounds up your alley, reply to this email and chat with Alyssa.)

Over the next few weeks, we'll redesign the site and brand and start diving into the site to make improvements. We've been building to do lists and spreadsheets and making an attack plan this week. We'll share more on this new project as we dive in!

A Recent Life Lesson

If we spend our lives always trying to make the perfect or "right" decision, we can waste so much of it.

Over the last few years I've realized I struggle with making decisions. I don't just struggle with it. I'm horrible at it. I'm wishy-washy. I change my mind.

It's not a trait I like about myself. It's not a trait that I think is desirable in a leader or a person who considers themself an entrepreneur and good at strategy.

But recently, I've started to identify why I struggle with making decisions.

I'm constantly analyzing and trying to figure out the right or "best" decision. There's a book called The Paradox of Choice in which the author refers to someone like myself as a "maximizer."

While analyzing the options to the nth degree may sound like a positive trait, evidence shows a better alternative: being a satisficer (I still think this is a made-up word from the book).

A satisficer finds an option that looks good enough and then jumps in with both feet. They don't over-analyze each path but find one that looks good and says yes.

Across the board, satisficers are happier and live a lighter life (according to the presented evidence).

I am not a satisficer.

When I think about what next startup or business I want to work on, I look at multiple verticals and businesses that could fit my skillsets.

When I think about where to raise our kids, I want to make the best decision possible. I look at schools, community charts, housing and weather and compare/contrast each option. I may throw it all into Chat GPT and ask it to list cities worldwide that match my priorities.

(I did. It recommended moving to New Zealand or Spain.)

But instead of moving forward, I stall. I hedge.

Recently, a friend told me that there are no right or wrong decisions; there are just decisions.

While my 18-year-old self might disagree with this sentiment, I felt there was a nugget of truth here.

The truth is that we can spend all of our energy trying to over-optimize to make the best decision and end up wasting our lives. Instead, a better strategy is to gather the evidence and make the best choice possible, living with the consequences and learning along the way.

Looking back on my life, some of the decisions that could be considered "wrong" are the ones I would never change and learn the most from.

For instance, in 2014, I thought I would be a documentary filmmaker and travel the world making movies.

As it turns out, we made one documentary that premiered in two different cities, and some people watched it online. It was not a rousing success.

But I don't consider working in all 50 states the wrong decision.

It was a decision that led me to meet some of my best friends and experience one of my life's most challenging (and growth-fueled) years. It also taught me a new skillset I used for the past decade to make Youtube videos and work with clients.

So, to sum up, I'm focusing more on making decisions and less on overanalyzing all the paths. I'm sure some decisions won't work out. But I will course correct, learn and move forward. This is a much better way to live than planning our lives.

One small example of how this has played out is deciding to do Boundless Life next year. I've exerted a lot of energy thinking about where we should go next, shopping for apartments in places, researching visas, joining expat groups on Facebook, anything to inform my decision for where we should live and travel.

Now that it's made, we can move on to other things, and it's helped me be more present in the moment.

As John Lennon (and others have said), “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making plans.”

:)

Hope you enjoyed this little update on our lives and projects moving forward. If you did, I'd love to hear from you and what you're working on or if this resonated with you.

—Heath (and Alyssa)