We're parents & entrepreneurs who travel the world in an RV with our two kids. We publish weekly articles on what we're learning in business & life. Currently documenting our journey of buying our first niche site for $100k and growing it to $1M (and sharing occasional RV travel vlogs from around the globe).
We wrapped an RV π
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Hey! Heath here, writing to you from an island off the coast of Italy called Sardinia (yes, definitely one of the coolest places I've ever typed in an email intro). Today, I wanted to share a few updates with you, including a big one: We WRAPPED AN RV (something I've always wanted to do but never really had a great reason to do). Before getting into wrapping an RV, I wanted to thank so many of you who reached out to us this past week on our Instagram to check in on Eli (our 3-year-old). He took a nasty fall while we were visiting a botanical garden last week in Florence and experienced his first ambulance ride for a nasty head wound. He is recovering well, already bragging to his sister about how he got to ride in an ambulance that goes "Wee-OOβwee-oo" π Okay, onto today's email. We WRAPPED an RV!Not me β¬οΈ Meet my friend Dennis. Dennis worked with me on Campground Booking and is working with me again on RV Help (obviously he's crazy). In our talks about RV life, he never let me forget that he hadn't actually lived on the road. As we discussed ways to market RV Help this year, he had a recurring idea: to get in a rig and drive it across the country to promote a better way to get RV service. I loved the idea (in principle), but it also felt scary. We're a startup, and buying an RV is no small expense. Would this be the best use of funds? Would we buy it as a business or personally? How much would it cost to buy and then wrap it? Not to mention the little fact that we're currently living in Europe and can't just casually go RV shopping to find the right rig. We'd find out all the answers soon enough. Our Goal for Buying an RV Backing up a little, in January this year, I started a new website called RV Help alongside my friends Dennis and Josiah. RV Help's goal is to help RV owners easily find nearby trusted techs whenever they experience a problem on the road. Side note: Over 60,000 people have used RV Help since we launched, and we just released a mobile app this week. You can download RV Help from the App Store here. If you do and find it useful, it would mean the world if you could leave us a review in the App Store and help other people find it! We had a few goals when buying an RV:
Okay, the last one was only partly true, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't enjoying it. Watching Dennis' video updates to the team takes me back to reading Alyssa's stories about our eventful first year of RVing across America. A more truthful last reason for buying an RV was that Dennis felt convinced this would be a great way to grow the business. I've learned that if someone is excited and energized about doing something, it typically means they will do it very well. The fact that Dennis saw this as a big win meant I wanted to support him. Plus, it would be cool to see our driving billboard cruise around the country. What Kind of RV Did We Buy My strategy for life and most decisions is to start with the coolest and most unrealistic option and then gradually bring myself down to reality. Heath's first choice: A 2023 $90,000 4X4 Mercedes Sprinter van that would have looked EPIC. Not sure why Alyssa repeatedly shut this down. Heath's actual choice: A 2020 used Cruise America rental unit with 150,000 miles on it for $31,000. Okay, so it won't go off-road. However, it will likely break often, so we can use our RV Help site to find great techs nearby who can come and fix it. It feels a little wild that knowing a rig will break down at some point feels like a win/win. We get to test our product actively and get content and feedback in real time. The Motorhome (pre-wrap) Cruise America rents out motorhomes for a few years and then sells them once they've reached a certain mileage. They have a couple of basic models to choose from (25 or 30 ft). And as you can see, the remove all the Cruise America branding before selling so you don't look like an uber tourist. We opted for a 25-footer because Dennis would be driving it around to RV shows without a tow vehicle, and we felt this was the most feasible option. One of the reasons I opted to buy a Cruise America was because it was a simple purchase option from a known source. I'd rather wire the money for an RV purchase to a legit company than Tom from Facebook marketplace and hope for the best. Dennis drove out to one of the Cruise America depots in Arizona to pick it up, and then back to Colorado to get it ready to hit the road. Designing an RV WrapOnce we bought the RV, it was time for the fun part: wrapping it. We discussed a few design ideas for this. Surprisingly, ChatGPT was actually pretty good at coming up with concept ideas for wrapping an RV. Here were a few that it came up with: My favorite was the bright green and navy blue. Naturally, the "coolest" option was also the most expensive because of all the custom parts of the wrap. Once again, I'd need to narrow down my options to a more realistic and budget-friendly one. We sourced quotes from several companies and eventually settled on a local one in Colorado. We scaled back some of the design concepts and mocked up our own simplified version below for the wrap company. They took our basic design and improved it, adding a cool map/navigation look to the color. It seemed like a small thing, but adding the color to the front of the cab made a big difference (in both costs but also coolness, a bit of a compromise there). The Finished ProductThe first official snap of the RV Help motorhome: Honestly, it came out even better than I'd hoped. Here's a pic from the other side. The RV no doubt stands out when driving down the road. Dennis gets stopped at gas stations and campgrounds and wherever he goes where people are asking him about RV Help or trying to convince him to take a look at their leaking grey tank. The funny part is that Dennis is not a tech at all, but it's a great opportunity to refer them to actual RV Pros on RV Help. The Cost to Wrap an RVWe got three quotes for this wrap, and if we'd had more time, we would have likely sought out more but we needed to get it to a show. The total price for the additional design help and wrap job was $7,200. It would have been several thousand more had we done a full wrap and not had so much white space. Not a cheap investment by any means, but one I believe will provide a great return as we grow RV Help into the #1 site to get RV service! Return on InvestmentIt's too soon to say whether or not doing an RV wrap was "the right call". However, Dennis has taken the unit to several RV events in Texas and Elkhart. We've had new people learn about RV Help from seeing it on the road, and several RV Service Pros express excitement about the campaign. My friend Bill from Harvest Hosts even found it on the road and shared this pic below. For me, wrapping the RV felt different from running a Facebook campaign, where I'm primarily chasing a quick return on investment. Wrapping an RV represents a commitment to the idea that "We're building something we believe is going to make a long-term impact in the RV industry, and we're excited to share that message with everyone." If you want to learn more about what we're building with RV Help, here are a couple of interviews I've done and links to what we're building:
What's Next?After wrapping up our latest Boundless Life cohort for the year, Alyssa, the kids, and I will hit the road in the RV Help motorhome this summer! We'll tour some national parks and our favorite Colorado spots in July and August. We're excited to spend some time RVing around the US again. If you made it this far, thank you so much for being a part of this email list. Do you have any exciting travel plans or projects you're working on this year? Would love to hear about it. Just click reply :). Talk soon, βHeath (and Alyssa) |
Heath & Alyssa
We're parents & entrepreneurs who travel the world in an RV with our two kids. We publish weekly articles on what we're learning in business & life. Currently documenting our journey of buying our first niche site for $100k and growing it to $1M (and sharing occasional RV travel vlogs from around the globe).
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...
Hey! Good morning. Heath here, writing to you from our home in southwestern Colorado. As someone who grew up in Texas, there's something magical about Colorado summers (one being little to no mosquitos and 75 degree days). Taking advantage of our summer here, our friend Joe Hendricks took us to the mountains last week to celebrate our 10-year wedding anniversary with some epic photos! Sharing here just because why not? After interviewing adventure photographers like Joe on the RV Entrepreneur...
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...