Hey!

This may mark the longest we've ever gone without a single email update to you all.

Over the past few months, we've had several big and small life changes (mostly big), and I wanted to share them with you.

First, where am I writing from?

I'm writing from a coworking space in Greece, where Alyssa, the kids, and I have lived for the past three months. Last year, we tried out a program called Boundless Life. Our first experience was a little rocky, but we decided to give it another go for this fall.

Boundless Life is a program located in six countries worldwide. It allows you to connect with other traveling families and use a coworking space, apartment, and school for the kids.

We lived in Portugal last fall with Boundless and have spent this fall on the small island of Syros. Here's me in the coworking space along the harbor :)

I will write another full-on post about some of our experiences this time around with Boundless, but the TLDR version is that we've loved it.

Our kids have thrived in an incredible school. We've made great friends and enjoyed a new country that we've never visited before.

I will share more to come, but despite how much we have fallen in love with this small island life in Europe, that's not even the exciting news in this email.

I already miss jumping in this water knowing that we will leave here in a few days!

Updates from Heath & Alyssa

Update #1 Alyssa sold RV Inspiration

In December of 2022, we purchased a business called RV Inspiration.

It was a DIY RV renovation blog and marketplace to sell renovated RVs. If you've read our updates over the past year, you may have seen some of her updates on how that business grew and lessons learned.

After a year and a half of running the website, Alyssa decided to sell it and move on.

She increased the value of the business considerably in a short period, and it was worth double what we bought it for. Plus, we'd already paid it off.

But she wasn't energized to work on it anymore.

She told me she'd felt like she'd created a job instead of doing something that brought her energy. She didn't look forward to sitting down at the computer and writing.

At first, she attempted to hire out and replace herself with an editor and a business manager. Her goal was to run the blog as a cashflowing business where someone else managed it and she could just check in and focus on the big picture.

But even with a team of writers and an editor, Alyssa still felt like she was carrying a lot of stress running the business, managing people, hiring people, and trying to continue to grow the sites.

She realized that while she no longer loved writing for the site, she enjoyed managing and hiring people even less.

It was an easy decision to sell.

For the first time ever, we sold a business through a broker (Quietlight) rather than through our network.

Selling a business through a marketplace/brokerage was an entirely different experience than selling through our relationships.

A key lesson in this selling experience was the value of trust when buying and selling a business. If you trust the other party, the process is 10X easier (i.e., you sell a business to someone you've known for years).

This lack of trust is amplified if you're selling a business to someone you just met—or have only met on phone calls.

It also comes into play when you're negotiating the contract specifics (i.e., indemnifications and all that fun stuff). At one point near the finish line of the deal, it almost fell apart, but we were able to salvage it and get it done.

Another key learning from selling via a broker was how much money you can save by selling a business yourself (we paid out a little more than 15% commission on our deal). In all our previous acquisitions, we'd always worked directly with the buyer and seller.

I could write a lot more about key learnings on selling or buying a business (I'll pester Alyssa to share her opinions on what the process was like!), but I will save that for another day because there are more exciting updates below!

Update #2: I'm Building My Next Startup!

After I left my role at Campground Booking in 2022, I promised Alyssa I'd take some time before jumping into the "next thing."

Alyssa suggested I take off at least six months. That six months turned into almost two years. During that time, we took the kids to 14 countries, drove an RV around New Zealand, Japan, and the UK, and tried two Boundless Life cohorts in Portugal and Greece. (And bought the aforementioned business!)

As a dad, I've cherished the past two years of our lives. As a family, I feel like we've flourished.

It also felt great to reap the rewards of working on a startup for five years. I felt like we'd earned a season to be present with our kids and go on adventures.

But after a while, I realized I missed building things. I missed bringing ideas and new businesses to life.

Also, I think I was starting to annoy Alyssa because I constantly came to her with new ideas. She told me I needed an outlet, or it could become a problem for everyone 😂

All this to say, I'm excited to share that I'm working on my next business venture called RV Help!

RV Help is a marketplace to connect RV owners to trusted and vetted nearby mobile RV technicians.

If you need to fix something on your RV, you can enter your location, and RV Help will connect you to nearby mobile techs with whom you can message and schedule appointments.

We will show not only techs who are stationary, but also feature traveling mobile techs who move around the country.

We aren't live yet, but we plan to launch at the Tampa RV show in January (side note: if you're reading this and planning to be near Tampa in January, let me know!). If we have enough people, I'll rent out a brewery or something, and we could have a launch party/meetup.

Why I'm excited about this business

As long-term RV owners, something was always breaking in our rig.

When something broke, the struggle to find fast and easy RV service was real.

For two summers in a row, we drove 15 hours from Austin, Texas, to Forest City, Iowa, to get work done at Winnebago because local dealers wouldn't do the work, and we couldn't find a trusted tech to work on our motorhome.

Another year, while driving through Amarillo, our slide-out got stuck at a campsite. A mobile tech came to fix it but couldn't figure it out, so we had to drive down the side of the road with our slide-out halfway out until someone could repair it.

I could list countless broken items for us and the struggle to find RV help nearby, which is why we are building a site that helps connect RV owners to trusted nearby techs.

The goal is to help RV owners quickly access quality service and help mobile techs create a thriving business on our platform.

If you want to stay in the loop for our launch, you can join our waitlist here.

Update #3: We're selling our home in Colorado

While a personal update, this is still a significant life change for us.

For a while, we've known that our town in Colorado wasn't a forever spot for us, but while the kids were young, it's been a very convenient and lovely home base.

We aren't quite sure where home will be, but we are open to what this next season of life brings and appreciating our freedom while the kids are still young. And looking once again at Escapees mail service to help us out now that we will be homeless full-time travelers again for a bit!

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Okay, now that I have written all of these down in this email, I recognize that these are all pretty big life changes!

While we have a lot in motion, life feels exciting right now. I am grateful for the opportunity to travel with our kids and experiment with different businesses.

Also, I hope to get back to more regular email updates!

If you've made it this far, I would love to hear from you. What are you working on that you're most excited about?

- Heath

PS If you are interested in being a beta member/user of RV Help, I'd love to connect with you and hear more about how we can improve RV service!