AI transcript
Getting paid to rent out other people’s stuff.
It’s true. What’s up?
What’s up, Nick Loper here.
Welcome to the Science Hustle Show, part of the entrepreneur
podcast network, because your earning power doesn’t have to stop when your day job does.
Now, you know, I love a rental business model.
It’s one of the four types of passive income.
You can quiz your friends what the other three are.
I’ll fill those in at the end of the show.
But today’s guest scaled his rental business in a unique way
by renting out other people’s RVs with their permission, of course.
Could you do the same thing?
Could you apply the same idea in a different niche?
Let’s stick around to find out from fireside RV rental.com Gar Russell.
Welcome to the Science Hustle Show.
Hey, Nick, thanks for having me.
Excited to be here with you.
Well, I’m excited for this one.
We’re covering how Gar convinced other owners to trust him with their RVs.
That’s a big step.
The logistics of running this thing and the bumps in the road along the way.
I want to start off with you have this idea like it’s going to be a fantastic
birthday present for your lovely bride or an anniversary present, rather.
And hey, honey, we got this RV.
Let’s go. We’re going to have all these fun times in the woods.
Imagining the years of outdoor fun and adventure ahead of you.
And her reaction is not quite what you’re hoping it will be.
Yeah, we got to the campground and we got set up.
I thought all was going well the first morning when she’s chasing our toddler
around and seven months pregnant with number four.
And she said, I’m going home, baby.
And I thought, oh, what did I forget?
And I didn’t forget anything.
She was just miserable and she was done camping.
And we were supposed to be there six more days.
Yeah, so that’s not how anybody wanted it to go down.
No, no, not at all.
And I went right into panic mode of, oh my gosh, I just bought this RV
for a lot of money and my wife doesn’t want to be here
and jumped onto Craigslist and threw it up for rent.
OK, so you’ve got this big expensive asset slash liability at the moment.
But hopefully it turns into an asset sitting in the driveway and said,
well, shoot, what am I going to do with this thing?
So you turn around and put up for rent on Craigslist.
What kind of reaction does that get?
Any takers? Yeah, you know, it blew my mind.
I literally had inquiries coming in within a couple of hours.
So the light bulb like immediately went off.
People are, hey, I need it for this weekend
because that was in July when I purchased it for.
So it’s like in the middle of summer and people are, oh, hey,
we’re going camping this weekend or that weekend.
You know, sure. So it was it was wild.
Any sort of like driver vetting?
Do you need like a commercial license to drive on these things?
I’d be intimidated driving around something in that size.
No, you go right to what people typically ask
when I ask them for their RV is, OK, who’s going to be driving this?
What’s that going to look like?
And so, yeah, there’s just like Airbnb and Toro.
There’s peer-to-peer platforms for this industry.
So they have the insurance and the driver
verifications and security deposits and, you know, all the things.
All right. So that is in place now.
What was your process early on of starting out?
Well, no. So when I started, there was who is still the main platform,
RVshare.com. They were up and running.
They started in 2013. I started in 2016.
I just sort of running rentals like right through RVshare
to use their insurance and all that stuff.
Oh, OK, OK, so we got some initial traction on Craigslist.
But hey, go check out my listing or go check out my profile book
through RVshare, one of the leading platforms outdoorsy being the other one
where it’s the peer-to-peer marketplace.
It’s the Toro. It’s the Airbnb for renting RVs.
So there was an existing demand here.
And I think that’s probably an important place to start is saying, well,
wasn’t necessarily reinventing the wheel.
It was like, hey, I’m going to go put my buy button up for sale on some place
where people are already looking for this thing to go rent this thing.
And so there was a precedent for doing that rather than
trying to create demand out of nowhere.
Exactly. Yeah.
What did you charge for those first weekend rentals?
Maybe like 100, 125 dollars a night or something like that.
OK, gosh, I imagine I remember these things were
completely blown up during the pandemic.
Like, well, I can’t do anything. I want to go camping, go rent an RV.
Or I rent a spinner van.
And sometimes it’d be like two fifty, three hundred bucks a night
for some of these like nicer decked out vans.
Oh, yeah, yeah, you can pay a premium.
We’ve got some nice like Super C diesels and some nice class B’s
and some big class A’s that, yeah, rent for four hundred dollars or more a night.
We just had a guy that paid six thousand dollars
to have an RV delivered from Alabama to Michigan
for a festival because he liked that unit so much that
it just was an incidental.
The money was just OK, what’s the cost?
And wow, he had had it for teledague races
and he wanted it for another event he was going to.
Was there a target occupancy or target monthly income
that you’re trying to hit to offset the payment, the depreciation?
Like something that would make it less of like, ah, you know,
this big money pit sitting in the driveway.
In the heat of the moment, no, it was literally just getting away
from the pain of feeling like a weirdo for buying a camper that my wife hated.
Then as things scaled and escalated,
yeah, then you start getting a little more granular and like, OK,
for the wear and tear on this and ours was a total, I always say,
towable travel trailer or drivable RV to help people differentiate.
Ours was a towable travel trailer.
So there wasn’t as much wear and tear like engine, you know, mileage,
generator, stuff like that.
OK, I’m picturing like an airstream or something
that would like attach to a hitch or like a fifth wheel.
Yeah, exactly.
That was our first that started this business.
Yeah, it was a towable.
Interesting.
And then for somebody starting out on RV share,
what kind of best practices did you find to get listing to your attention?
He’s like, OK, Craig’s list kind of I guess people will be seeking it out.
But now, all of a sudden, if you’re on these platforms,
you’re competing with dozens of other listings in your areas.
Like, well, how do I make mine the one that they click on and want to book?
Just like anything else, honestly, real estate,
throwing something up on marketplace.
Pitchers is obviously a huge one painting a picture for somebody
like them seeing themselves inside of that travel trailer,
seeing their family inside of that is the layout going to work.
Is it going to have the right amenities that it needs?
So that’s something that I realized was important right off the bat
is really helping people understand because these people that were renting
my camper, they weren’t campers.
They just wanted to go camping.
So I was really painting a really clear picture for them fast forward down the road
to we’ve got 45 locations across the country now.
Franchise is doing this competing with others.
It’s all about creating value, showing the value where so many people
that jump on these platforms are just lowering their prices, lowering their prices.
You know, like, hey, $40 a night rent my camper.
So our whole thing is showing value.
It is interesting as you walk down that road and you scale
and you start to really think about your market and the best way to serve them.
Right at a certain price per night, it doesn’t pay for the hassle
of dealing with the logistics and the wear and tear on the thing.
And just I don’t know if that’s worthwhile.
It’s going to make sure it is worthwhile.
Exactly, yeah, especially on the drivable RVs, where you’re putting miles
on an engine and wear and tear as you’ve got to be very mindful of depreciation.
Depreciation is a great side of this because just like real estate, you can depreciate it.
But also, like you mentioned at the beginning there, this is a liability to start.
It’s not like a piece of real estate where it’s going to appreciate.
It’s depreciating the moment you buy it.
So it’s very mindful of that.
All right.
So you start to see some traction on RV share a little bit through the Craigslist ad.
You say, OK, there might be something here.
I’m no longer losing money on this thing or I’m no longer losing as much money on this thing.
You’re like, well, the way to scale is more inventory here.
There’s only so many weekends in the month.
There’s only so many days in the month somebody could rent this thing.
So if I want more inventory, I got to go out and find more RVs.
So what is this conversation like?
How do you find the first people to say, like, have I got it?
A business proposition for you.
I’m going to rent some strangers or let some strangers into your vacation vehicle here.
And I’ll give you a cut of the proceeds.
Like, what are these conversations start?
So it didn’t start with that model, what I call the OPRV model.
It really started with I need more RVs.
So literally, fast forward to the end of August.
We’re having number four that my wife was miserable with in July pregnant.
All of our kids were born on C sections, VSC sections.
So literally, it’s like scheduled, you know what you’re going to do?
You check into the room. It’s like, OK, maybe it’s here.
You’re in the room.
So I get my wife and baby checked into the room.
And then literally, I’m like, all right, honey, I’ll be right back.
And where was I going?
I was headed to the dealership to buy four more RVs.
Oh, my gosh. OK.
And she’s like, oh, OK, she’s been an entrepreneurial spouse for long enough to know.
Like, we just do weird things like that as entrepreneurs.
But literally, as I’m doing that, the Lord was like, OPRV.
That’s when I got the OPRV method was God telling me that.
I still went and bought the RVs because I’m already driving there.
I’m a little dense. It takes me a little bit to catch on.
But a couple of weeks later, that’s when it clicked like, no, it’s other people’s assets.
So that’s when I started reaching out to other people like, hey,
I want to take your RV and rent it.
And it was literally one or two things.
First person I asked was my sister-in-law, and she’s like, that’s gross.
Like, someone’s not sleeping in my bed.
That’s a very bad idea.
That’s what I imagined the reaction was going to be like, I know, thanks.
We bought it for our own family.
Like, yeah, that’s weird.
And then I reached out to my best friend, Jeremy.
And Jeremy was like, dude, that’s sweet for sure.
Sign me up, man.
And so there was unit number two and it went on from there.
What was the proposal?
What was like the rev share?
What kind of pitch did you come to it with?
It was very simple.
It’s, hey, I’ll do all the work and we’ll split the revenue 50/50.
So he had a nine to five.
I didn’t, I owned some businesses in real estate and I had freedom in my
schedule to do different things.
That was the presentation was I’m going to do all the work.
We split the revenue 50/50.
How did you deal with getting the RVs to the customers?
I guess it’s all local or they come to your place and pick it up.
Or, you know, just, I think of like moving vehicles all around, like with rental
cars, like I pick it up at the airport and then I fly away and drop it off.
Like it’s somewhat easier.
But in this case, it’s like, well, where do I store the thing?
Now, if you got five of them, where do I store these things?
Plus, you know, trying to meet people where they’re at.
Yeah, it was me and my truck and moving units around.
And I lived on some acreage.
So I decided, OK, I should probably start grouping these things together
logistically to make a little bit easier myself.
And then I got a violation from the city that I wasn’t zone to do that.
So then it moved into, all right, well, I want to keep doing this.
So we got a parking lot that we run it out.
OK, OK, one from there to we got our own facility.
We’re like, well, we can collect storage on these when they’re not being used.
So we’ll get a facility that’ll cover overhead for the facility, the storage fees.
And it just, yeah, one thing to the next.
Next thing you know, I have RV tax working for me and I and I have storage
and I sell propane and we have a dump station and all these different things.
Oh, sorry, explain the storage fees.
Sorry, I’m confused on that part.
Most people pay to store their RV a storage facility.
So OK, yeah, we just ended up grouping them together.
And that’s how a lot of our franchises run today is they just partner
with a storage facility near them and they group the RVs there.
So for them, they don’t have a lot of that overhead
as far as having to have like a brick and mortar and all that overhead.
Got it. OK, here’s the centralized parking lots to come and pick everything
and go on your way for your trip. OK, exactly. Yeah. Got it.
All right, Gar’s got his first OPRV on board.
He’s proven out the concept.
And now he’s on the hunt for more owners who will let him run out their RVs.
That process and more coming up right after this.
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All right. So you get the first OPRV on board and say,
“Hey, all the other work, we’ll split the revenue, sounds good, deal, sign me up.”
What happens after that?
It’s like trying to find, you know, RV campsites nearby
and like canvassing people, although those might be renters themselves.
Or you go into RV owner Facebook groups and saying,
“Hey, have you ever thought about this, but trying to approach it in a non-skizzy way
and get kicked out of the group? How does the scale?”
It’s scaled on the finding the renter side.
I would create ads on Craigslist for rent.
And then really, I just leaned on the peer-to-peer platforms.
So RV, Share, Outdoorsy and there’s a couple others.
They were basically handling my lead generation as far as finding me renters.
Sure. And then defining owner side, that’s really easy.
I mean, there’s RVs, there’s over 12 million RVs sitting around doing nothing.
So what I did was someone had an RV in their driveway and knocked on their door,
went to storage facilities, tried to strike up deals like mom and pop facilities
to talk to their owners.
And then just like, you know, if you’re renting your house on Airbnb,
they have Airbnb Facebook groups.
I started joining those groups for people that were renting their RV
and just kind of sharing, hey, if you find like this is too much work for you
with your nine to five, I’m happy to do the work for you.
And then just kind of sharing my entrepreneurial history and real estate.
OK, like an Airbnb property manager or like a co-hosted Airbnb thing,
like where you still own the asset.
Hey, we’re not going to buy it from you.
We are going to take a percentage.
We’re going to handle the booking requests.
We’re going to handle the customer interaction, the cleaning, all that stuff.
And you can still make money from it.
Yeah, exactly. If you like renting your RV, but you don’t like the work so much,
we’ll do the work for you.
OK, so targeting, it sounds like people starting out who were used to that idea
rather than trying to force yourself upon the market of just those 12 million
RV owners who maybe hadn’t considered that as an income stream.
They just have it for personal use and they don’t really care.
I imagine you could probably convert some of those, but going after the people
who are open to renting it or have proven to be open to it already.
That’s a warmer market to tackle.
Yeah, and especially now post COVID, like you talked about everybody
RVing and everybody buying an RV during COVID.
Yeah.
Now, a lot of our pool that we draw from is just Facebook Marketplace.
Just going on there and just sharing the concept with people.
Hey, I see your RVs for sale.
It’s beautiful.
If you find that you’re getting lowball offers and maybe you need to pay
your principal down some, we’ve got a program that we’ve created to help with that.
If you want more information, we’d love to tell you.
Interesting.
Yeah, it’s a really interesting product class because of that super,
super low utilization rate where it’s like, it probably sits around 50
weeks out of the year.
I mean, some of the stats on cars sit idle 22 hours a day or something.
It’s like, for this, it’s got to be even more average it out on a daily basis.
And so that makes it a really interesting asset to try and try and improve
that a little bit.
Hey, sitting around, let’s let some other families enjoy it.
We’ll put some money in your pocket and go from there.
So you start to get some traction doing that and trying to manage primarily local
or is it kind of branching out geographically at this point?
I imagine with different Facebook groups, it’s a nationwide or international audience.
Yeah, when we started, it was primarily local.
We kind of found our niche.
A lot of people going to specific state parks for family camping trips.
And so we would kind of figure out where we would want to serve as far as how
far we’d want to deliver and stuff like that.
Yeah, it’s just amazing.
There’s campgrounds everywhere.
There’s storage facilities everywhere.
There’s RV dealerships everywhere.
It’s kind of like you buy a red car, then all of a sudden you realize somebody
red cars are out there on the roads.
RVing is everywhere.
It’s what a lot of Americans do.
What’s the one I used to always see in RV America?
Or it’s like one big, it seems to be a nationwide rental outfit.
Yeah, Cruise America.
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Yeah, so Cruise America is still around.
They’re the billboard on wheels, basically.
It’s really interesting because learning the RV industry now over the years, a
lot of dealerships used to rent RVs out.
And that was a lead generation tool for them.
That was a way to take new inventory, make some money off it, appreciate it a
little bit and then turn around and sell it used.
And then there was like this mass Exodus and basically who’d you have left?
Cruise America.
There’s a couple other guys out West.
And then in 2013, this industry just came up out of nowhere.
It was literally the founder of RV share took his family on a camping trip.
When he got back, he’s like, all right, well, I traveled across the country
like I wanted to do.
Now I have this RV.
What do I do with that?
I’m going to rent it out.
And he went online to look for a platform and there wasn’t one.
Yeah.
And that’s how RV share was birthed.
Is the Cruise America model more like a rental car business where they own the
units or is it similar?
Whereas like, well, the ones that I remember seeing were all pretty uniform.
It seemed to be like the same model.
Yeah.
Cruise America, they have them built in batches and it’s similar models.
And they kind of operate a little bit like U-Haul, like they’ll partner with
businesses that have a little bit of real estate where they can park some
RVs and they give them a percentage of the revenue.
Yeah.
No, I love the rental business model.
If I’m pausing, it’s because my gears are turning and like, well, what other?
Maybe it’s industrial equipment or something.
I’m thinking about the stuff that I would go and rent for my painting business.
Like, well, this big 40 foot ladder.
Or I wouldn’t make sense to own that because you only needed it maybe once
or twice per season, but you go to the United rentals, I think was the place.
And you rent this for the day or rent this for the week.
If you needed it on the job site, it’s like, what are the other things with
like super low utilization, maybe kind of a high upfront cost?
Where do I really want to buy that?
Especially from the point of view of the RV vacationer.
Do I really want to buy this?
I would love to just rent it for the week.
Like that seems lower risk, lower overhead.
We’ll see if we like it, a trial run type of thing.
So if I pause, that’s where I’m like, what else could you rent out?
So yeah, I like that.
It is amazing with RVs.
It’s almost like a time share.
When you buy it, it’s like, it seems like the best idea ever.
You know, my gosh, we’re going to go there all the time and memories and all
these things and you realize Johnny’s got practice and you got X amount of
weeks of vacation a year and I don’t know, do we load the RV up just to go away
for the weekend and you know, is it worth it?
And you get your avid RVers.
I mean, heck, we literally full time RV for almost five years while we were
building this business, we had a blast and we loved the lifestyle.
But most Americans, it’s like, yeah, it’s our most of the year.
You think that full time RV experience was an asset in having conversations
with RV owners.
I guess if people are doing it full time, they don’t have the capacity to go
and rent it out for extra income.
But like you were in the space.
Like you knew you could speak the lingo, you know, it was funny.
I didn’t really spend a lot of time sales and marketing like on the road.
We would work hard during the summer with our business, make a really good
amount of money and then we would just travel around all winter.
And so it’s kind of like the brain was turned off a little bit and hindsight
what I’ve learned about marketing the last couple of years.
I’m like, oh my gosh, I could have created so much content and done so
much blogging and this and that, but I wish I could do that all over again.
But yeah, it was really it was the business model.
When I started to duplicate it, that’s how I presented it was.
I called it the six figure summer.
You work your tail off for about five, six months.
You have about 20, 25 RVs in your fleet.
Do you crush it during the summer and then you travel during the winter?
That’s the business model I built because we, we homeschool our four kids.
We love to travel and do life together.
That was the thought when we created it, when we turn it into a biz opportunity
that we sold to others as well.
Yeah.
I admire the ability to turn it off.
And say, hey, six figure summer, had a great season.
We’ll do it again next year versus, well, what about the fall season?
What about if we did six figure, maybe we could do multi.
You have this kind of concept that I call gravy time.
How long into the year do you need to work to cover your annual expenses?
The average, I want to say, based on a five percent savings rate is like
people are working to the second week of December before they’re like,
okay, I’ve covered my expenses, right?
And I have this really thin margin at the end of the year.
We’ve met other people who are like, I’m good.
By March, I’m good.
I booked enough work.
I’m happy.
It’s like, ah, you know, the ability to kind of turn it off, dial it back.
I really like that.
I really like this concept of the six figure summer.
I wanted to ask for, as you’re signing on other RV owners to kind of be
their rental agent, their property manager, so to speak, handle these rental bookings.
Is there a typical target?
And it’s going to vary based on market and seasonality and all that.
But in terms of the monthly occupancy rate or the monthly income, any metrics
that you could share on that front for like, what is this thing sitting in the
driveway realistically worth?
Even ballpark ranges would be fine.
Yeah, I can tell you our average is based on our historical data.
Like this year, the average booking is six days this year.
The average net to the travel trailer owner is right around three to five
hundred dollars per booking.
If it’s a drivable RV, it’s about five to seven hundred dollars per booking.
And then based on the location, if it’s a seasonal location or if it’s
Florida, Arizona, California, somewhere like that, if it’s a seasonal location,
they’re going to do about seven to 10 bookings per summer.
And then a year round location could do double that.
So that’s kind of a starting point that we give people as far as the owner, as
far as how much they can earn.
And then also there’s the right offside of it, too.
They get to depreciate the RV, which is great.
They get to write off, you know, the insurance and repairs and maintenance
and stuff like that.
If you’re not renting it out, then there’s no depreciation you can claim
because it’s not seen as like a business asset.
Exactly.
Yeah.
I’ve had investors that have literally purchased Class C drivable RVs just
to offset taxes.
Yeah, I imagine that depending on the vehicle, that might be worth more than
the 500 bucks per booking.
Yeah.
Interesting.
Okay, that’s helpful.
And are you still doing 50/50 rev share split or has that adjusted over time
during this kind of like pre-franchise phase?
Yeah, so we still do a 50/50 revenue split.
We just now we have a platform fee that comes off the top.
So like RV share, they get 25% commission.
Okay.
All their owners.
We have a corporate agreement with them because we’re their largest customer.
And then outdoors, you know, so all the platforms have their fees.
So just across the board, we take a 15% off the top and then we split the revenue
after that.
Okay.
And the reason I ask is, well, if I’m going to take the OPRV model to another
niche, to another product class, like, okay, what’s typical?
So yeah, there’s going to be the platform fee and then the kind of like agency fee
that will do it all for you fee of handling the stuff.
And then after they come back, is it like Airbnb, you know, attack on a cleaning
fee or is that kind of taken out of the booking?
And you got to coordinate cleaners to come through and make sure it’s ready
for the next guest.
Add-ons are a great extra revenue source for the franchisees.
We have some bookings that you’d be amazed.
It’s like a weekend booking.
It’s cost them like maybe $600, $700.
They have $800 in add-ons.
Like they got the linen’s package.
They got the kitchen package.
They got the s’mores kit.
They got the chairs.
They rented the kayaks.
So the list goes on and on and on, especially when people are like flying in.
If they’re coming in, like we work with Talladega, Bonnaroo Music Festival,
Burning Man, the different events like that, equestrian events.
Okay.
People will pay a premium like to fly in, have it loaded with groceries.
That’s at the airport ready for them or it’s delivered right to the infield of
the raceway.
Yeah, we have bookings where somebody will literally come in for a weekend and
they’re dropping $3,000 to $5,000 for a weekend rental.
Wow.
Okay, catering to a different level of affluence in certain cases.
Like, hey, we’re going to make it easy for you.
That’s the cool thing about it is it’s wheel estate, right?
It’s a house on wheels.
So it’s so multifaceted.
Like we work with insurance companies.
We’ve had several RVs in the last couple months go just to be parked
alongside someone’s house.
There was fire damage, water damage.
The insurance company is paying us $4,000 to $6,000 a month to set up an RV on
the side of the house or hurricanes.
During COVID, I get a power plant in Michigan that orders 72 travel trailers
as quarantine units for their electrical engineers.
Okay.
Yeah, maybe not the intended use case, but a use case nonetheless.
Yeah.
So I facilitate that order.
I go and I buy three rental properties from that.
That was phenomenal.
That’s interesting.
And then to go back to the cleaning and turnover thing, is that just have a team
of house cleaners that could also clean RVs on location near these kind of
parking center storage center type of places that can handle the turnover.
Yeah.
So you find people that clean air B and B is, you know, it’s such an interesting
concept to people that a lot of times if you, Hey, I’m looking for someone to
clean campers, like they don’t even respond to the ad.
But if you go into a Facebook group and you’re Aaron, you say, Hey, I’m looking
for somebody who cleans short term rentals.
Now all of a sudden you got 35 people messaging you saying, Oh yeah, I can do
that for you.
And then he’s, okay, great.
It’s the same thing with like delivering the campers.
My famous ad was always, Hey, I’m looking for old retired guys with
trucks that are bored, you know, and then you get a bunch of people that laugh
and comment and this and that.
And then they message you, Hey, what do you got?
I’m an old retired guy with a truck.
Like, well, actually I need someone to deliver campers for me to the campgrounds.
I have guys that literally they’re like, God, just give me gas money.
They’re like, I’m having so much fun doing this.
I just like it’s camping growing up.
This is a blast.
Husband and wife teams are cleaning the campers, delivering them, having a blast
together.
It’s amazing how quick you can pull together a team when it comes to this.
Okay.
Fascinating.
I love that ad.
Hey, we’ll do it for free.
Just cover the gas more with Gar in just a moment, including some of the things
that can happen on the open road and how to protect yourself from those.
And why he chose the franchise model to scale operations even further.
All that and more coming up right after this.
Obviously you have the bad side to it too.
Just like anything else.
We had people show up to pick up RVs that had no business being in an RV that
we’re just mad because they couldn’t go to Max score or whatever.
This thing is horrible.
It’s, I’m not taking this thing.
And there’s nothing wrong with it.
They’re just miserable.
Anything else on that horror story list or the mistakes or.
Oh yeah.
We’ve got horror stories for sure.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The biggest one we have that we get a hoot out of is there was a couple of
ladies in Pennsylvania.
They were renting an RV for a couple of months.
They were going all the way to California and back brand new RV day.
Number two, they wake up.
They have bed bug bites like head to toe bed bug bites.
We’re getting treatments.
We’re getting them hotels.
We’re getting them rental cars.
We’re like, ladies, do your, you’re like, my saying was always like, no rental
canceled, like we’ll get them through because if you’re an RV or you get it,
like things go wrong, things break.
That’s like part of the RV experience.
Like things are going to happen, right?
It’s a house going down the road shaking and things are, it just, things happen.
We got these ladies all the way to California and back and come to find out.
We’re just, you know, we’re like, what in the world happened?
We’re talking to the owner of this RV and trying to just figure this out.
She’s like, well, it’s not me.
I work at a women’s shelter.
I deal with bed bugs all the day.
I know it’s nothing to do with me.
Nothing to do with you.
The light bulb goes off.
Well, you work at a women’s shelter.
You deal with bed bugs all day long and your brand new RV has bed bugs in it.
You don’t think there’s any connection there?
Yikes.
Yeah.
That’s challenging.
Have you ever had the example of, I guess if you do enough volume, it’s
bound to happen, but somebody damaging the vehicle or trashing the vehicle or
like, how do you protect the owners from something like that?
Same as Airbnb and Toro, there’s insurance, there’s security deposits,
there’s driver verifications, there’s contracts, but it definitely happens.
That’s one of the things that I encouraged by franchisees on.
When you’re talking to RV owners, if they’re super hyper sensitive about
people being in their RV or damages is just let them know, hey, this
probably isn’t the program for you because obviously there’s, you know,
some emotional connection to that RV, which makes sense.
And damages are going to happen.
I mean, I just had issues with my Airbnb last weekend, whether it’s a
house and RV or whatever.
I mean, people are going to not show proper respect and certain scenarios.
And two, just things are going to happen.
Things are going to break.
So that definitely does happen for sure.
Yeah, you found the platform insurance is adequate or they’re reasonably
responsive to customer service requests when stuff like that does come through.
Yeah.
Yeah, they’re great.
RV share is phenomenal.
We just had a situation with RV share where there was some damages.
The security deposit did not process on their credit card.
The renter’s credit card.
We caught it too late.
RV share just sent us the money.
They’re phenomenal.
Do I need a commercial license to go drive a 30 footer?
Like, it seems huge.
Yeah, you would think so.
You really would because you can get a drivable RV up to 42 foot long.
Yeah, it’s the size of a school bus.
Yeah, people are literally buying these things at the dealership.
You got a 70 year old retired couple that are like, all right, thanks.
This is great.
We’re hitting the road and they’re just pulling out the road.
Like, there’s no licensing.
There’s no requirement.
They can be in these huge, monstrous diesel built on Freightliner chassis.
That’s a six figure class A’s and they’re just on the road.
Okay.
Yeah, that’s, I mean, I guess positive that it’s accessible to everybody.
Nerve racking, if that is your baby that some Rindo, no experienced person
has taken out onto the highway for the first time.
Yeah, the class A’s definitely, those are the number one damage RVs out of all of them
because they’re just huge the way that you’re sitting on it and you’re turning
radius and the swing in the back and stuff like that.
Yeah.
Is there a sweet spot that you like to play in in terms of the class or the
size of RV or trailer?
Bunkhouse, travel trailers and fifth wheels are very popular because the
audience that we’re seeking to serve is families typically.
So it’s typically the family.
They’re going on their summer family camping trip.
They’re going to be at a state park for a week or it’s the family.
They’re getting in a driveable RV.
They’re going to Disney.
They’re going to California and so on.
And then the big class A’s, those are typically rented more for like the high
end events where people are flying in.
They want everything top of the line.
They’re not even driving their RV.
It’s getting delivered there and they’re just showing up to use it.
Okay.
Talk to me about the next stage of this business because I think this is an
interesting fork in the road.
So you find something that works.
You’re signing up these other RV owners.
You’re collecting your fee.
They’re getting booked.
They’re making money.
Everybody is happy.
You’re dealing with the headaches as they come up like any entrepreneur does.
So we found something that works.
But to really scale this thing, we need to go really broad.
We need to be in more geographies and it’s just difficult to do.
So we need like boots on the ground.
We need franchisees in these different areas.
So you start to franchise fireside RVRental.com versus, you know, an alternative
path would have been like, I’ll create the online course on how to start an RV
business or just continue to hire local branch managers.
Like there’s different paths.
So what attracted you to the franchise model?
Because this is mired in red tape, regulatory standpoint.
Does it get a franchise approved if my understanding is correct?
Yeah, very much is.
I think it was my entrepreneurial that kind of led me up to this one.
My entrepreneurial journey.
I owned a credit counseling company and I created like a business in a box
opportunity to show other people how to do what I was doing.
And my whole niche was creating homeowners.
I’d build a real estate portfolio, multifamily unit rental properties.
And I’d done a good job of automating and systems and people running my rentals for me.
Like I didn’t use property management companies.
I had people that worked for me and then my credit.
So it was kind of all the combination of things that led up to this to where once
I decided, okay, to continue to scale this, what do I want to do?
And really what I wanted to do is I wanted to create passive continuity.
I wanted to create reoccurring income.
And what was a way for me to do that, it was to have the model where I’m showing
somebody, but I’m also offering them support and I’m getting a percentage of the revenue.
So it actually happened through one of the Facebook groups for this industry up here
to peer Facebook group.
I was just in there sharing.
You know, you’re all excited about the thing that you’re doing, you know,
something there and I’m teaching people and sharing and this and that.
Some guy says, Hey, why don’t you start one of those up here in the upper
peninsula of Michigan?
Yeah.
And I was down in the lower peninsula, West Michigan.
I said, Yeah, let’s do it, man.
I said, tell you what, you be my guinea pig and we’ll start it.
I won’t charge you anything.
And then we’ll prove the model and then go from there.
And so that’s what I did.
And he’s still with us today, Kim, Kim in the upper peninsula of Michigan.
Okay.
Okay.
Yep.
And then I turned it into like a biz in a box.
I charged $995 and then I got a percentage of their revenue.
And then I had my office girls who were like answering the inquiries and
offering ongoing support to get a percentage of the revenue.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
So it was kind of a hybrid model, like this education component, plus
ongoing support, plus we’ll still take a, you succeed.
We succeed type of thing.
We’re still going to take a fee.
Okay.
Yeah.
So it’s like, yeah, kind of a white glove service and we offer this and that.
And then it went to, okay, now it’s $5,000.
Now it’s $10,000.
And now we offer this and we offer that.
And now we’re going to manage your website and your social media.
Oh, we negotiated a special agreement with RV share.
You get part of that agreement.
And I had a handful of locations.
My location was running on autopilot.
I had sold my credit counseling business on owner finance.
I had built a decent real estate portfolio.
So I had a good amount of revenue coming in from all these sources.
And so I just, I really got kind of passive and was just hanging out.
And there was the Lord again.
He said, it’s time to franchise.
I said, no, thank you.
And a week or a month later, he’s like, it’s time to franchise.
And it was a couple of months conversation.
Finally, I did it just like you said, right?
Red tape.
I mean, this, it cost me six figures to do it.
It took over a year to do it.
It was, I mean, our franchise disclosure documents, like 200 pages, not wired that
way.
I want to run and hustle and grind.
I don’t want documents and red tape and FTC and all that kind of stuff.
But I did it.
We walked through the process and here we are today.
Well, very good.
You’re signing up people all over the place to start their own fireside RV
rental chapter franchise in their local area.
You said 45 locations around the country at this point.
Yeah.
I think we got about 45 locations and hundreds and hundreds of RVs under management.
Yeah.
It’s just world domination.
One RV at a time.
Fascinating.
Is there a target that you say, we want to be in the top
hundred RV market?
Like, how do you even measure?
Like, where does this thing go?
We want a hundred franchisees.
We want some level of bookings every season or something.
You know, it’s interesting as you grow as an entrepreneur, your goals are
constantly changing, right?
The goal was, okay, I want a eight figure valuation by the end of 2024.
That was the goal, the beginning of last year.
And then the goal, I just went to a conference mastermind junkie.
I just, I love going to conferences and learning and all that.
And then after I just went to this recent conference, I’m like, okay, the
goal is 250 locations by the end of 2024.
One of the speakers there was Dr. Benjamin Hardy.
And he spoke on his book, 10X is easier than 2X.
He just talked about just set goals that like completely blow out the floor.
You have to rethink everything.
Like you’re starting from scratch.
So I talked to my business partner like 250 locations.
That’s the goal.
So we hired a marketing firm and we got leads just flooding every day.
And then it was really, it was like, none of those are my goals anymore.
It’s really just serving the people that join our community and just living a
balanced life is the goal now.
So we do that, right?
We’re generating 40, 50 franchise leads a day.
I’m on 30, 40 calls a week, I hire a sales rep.
He’s on 30, 40 calls.
And I’m in this extreme imbalance.
I’m like, I don’t want that.
You know, I want the balance.
I want, you’re constantly reevaluating, you know, as an entrepreneur.
It’s amazing how quickly the goals turn and shift.
Yeah.
You get used to a certain level of success and comfort.
And then the goalpost moves again.
It’s some level of hedonic adaptation, but it’s some level of going back to
your six figure summer and saying, well, how much is enough?
What are we doing this for?
Are we, we’re good, you know, it’s going back to the time with the family,
supporting the people in the community, being a part of that community.
I think it’s definitely an interesting one.
I appreciate you sharing all of that.
Mywheelestatestory.com, that’s Wheel Estate, like wheels on your RV.
You can check out Gar’s book over there.
Mywheelestatestory.com, love it.
And FiresideRVRental.com, you can check them out over there.
Let’s wrap this thing up with your number one tip for side hustle nation.
All work works.
I’ve really been digging that saying the last year is as entrepreneurs, we do
something and it doesn’t work out the way that we think it does, that it should.
And we think it was a failure, but really all work, all action that we take works.
And it’s either working on us, it’s changing us.
It’s helping us to grow as a person, overcome insecurities, fears, doubts
worries, or it’s doing the thing we want to do.
It’s working for us, like there’s results, right?
We’re generating, we’re adding customers, the business is growing.
But I just, I want to encourage people in that all work works.
So it works on you, it works for you.
But the biggest thing is don’t stop doing the things, don’t stop doing the work.
And do you have an example of some work that didn’t work out the way you wanted it to?
You’re like, I reached a dead end and now I got to go back.
You know, just with the recent marketing that we started doing, we hired a marketing firm
that just for their monthly services, it was $10,000 a month plus our ad spend.
And that was a huge step of faith for us.
And what we realized was after these two and a half months that we were with them is
all we really needed to do was increase our ad spend.
But it was when I had that all in, like we’re going to 250 locations.
Yeah.
Kind of dropping the floor out from under me.
It was, OK, we’re all in.
So we hired this marketing firm.
Yeah, we learned a bunch of amazing stuff from them.
But the biggest thing we learned is really if we would have simply just increased
because that’s part of what they had us do.
We increased our ad spend by five fold.
If we would have just done that to begin with, we would have been very similar results.
Save the $10,000 fee.
Yeah, but you think, right?
OK, we’re going big leagues now.
We need to do all these things.
And we did learn some amazing things and we’re still using them on a lower scale.
But it was funny in hindsight.
We learned like really, we just could have increased our ad spend.
But we learned a lot about our metrics and how much it costs us to book a call
and our average customer value.
We learned a lot of important things.
So the work definitely worked inside of us and taught us a bunch of stuff.
But really what worked for us was just increasing our ad spend by five times.
All right, fair enough.
But it’s one of those things where, like you said, all work works.
You don’t know until you test it out and see what happens.
So I appreciate you sharing that.
And I think that is definitely relevant for side hustle show listeners.
Like you might be feeling like you’re grinding away at something.
But even if it’s not getting you the results you want, it is still hopefully
resulting in some level of education or improving your skills and processes
in some area that you can pivot and apply to something else if need be.
Or, you know, to keep on going and breaking through all work works.
That may be a new one from six hundred and something episodes.
I may not have heard that one before.
So I like that one couple of takeaways for me before we wrap.
And number one is thinking of these expensive underutilized assets.
That’s the sweet spot to make a rental business work where especially
and maybe a bulky item that somebody may not want to travel with.
Like we had a mobility scooter rental episode.
That was really interesting.
We’ve seen people do this with photo booths
with what’s called like a champagne wall or like a donut peg board
that we rent out for like weddings or something.
It’s like it’ll cost you one afternoon and a hundred bucks worth of materials
to build this thing.
You rent it out for a hundred bucks per wedding.
I love businesses like that.
So I think that’s fascinating stuff and then just tapping into existing
marketplaces, the RV shares of the world.
Like if something like that exists in whatever niche that you are considering,
that’s probably a good sign.
And if you can go and recruit other people to say, hey, have you ever thought
about putting your thing up for rent there or even if you are.
But maybe it’s a pain like you mentioned with the other RV owner.
Like is it really worth the time effort?
Oh, hey, we’ll do all the work for you.
Just pay us half the fee and we’ll take care of it for you.
Make it easy, make it easy.
Now, we’ve been chatting RVs in this episode, but like we’ve kind of tossed
in here or there, certainly not the only things that you can rent out for a profit.
Get your creative juices flow and I want to invite you to download
your exclusive listener only bonus for this episode.
That’s my list of 25 other unconventional rental ideas.
Just hit the link in the episode description.
You’ll be able to grab that for free.
Now, as promised at the top of the show, we talked about four types of passive income.
One is Gar’s model, renting out other people’s stuff or renting.
You don’t have to be other people’s stuff, but just renting something out.
Get paid over and over again from something that you buy once.
Love it. And maybe maybe you don’t even have to buy it.
I think it’s a creative example.
So that’s number one.
Number two is to buy cash flowing assets.
This is the old takes money to make money option.
This could be dividend investing.
This could be real estate.
This could be business lending, stuff like that.
Great model.
If the important part, if you already have money to invest.
That’s the bottleneck for most people.
Third one is to build assets.
This is the sweat equity option.
This is building something of value.
It could be a digital product.
It could be a website.
It could be a collection of YouTube videos on a video channel.
Could earn advertising revenue.
This is the space that I have typically played in the sweat equity option,
trying to build passive income assets.
Obviously takes a lot of time, takes a lot of creative energy to do that,
but can run relatively passive or relatively time leveraged.
Sometimes for years, if set up right.
And the fourth one is probably the most overlooked one.
And this is what I call reverse passive income is what you earn when you cut
your ongoing monthly expenses.
You switch your cell phone providers, you cut out the gym membership.
You start working out from home.
It’s the saving money is go straight to your bottom line.
Reverse passive income model.
Those are the four that I teased at the top of the show.
But Gar, thanks so much for sharing your insight.
Big thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone.
You can hit up side hustle nation dot com slash deals for all the latest offers
from our sponsors in one place.
Thank you for supporting the advertisers that support the show.
That’s it for me.
Thank you so much for tuning in until next time.
Let’s go out there and make something happen.
And I’ll catch you in the next edition of the side hustle show.
Hustle on.
[BLANK_AUDIO]
It’s true. What’s up?
What’s up, Nick Loper here.
Welcome to the Science Hustle Show, part of the entrepreneur
podcast network, because your earning power doesn’t have to stop when your day job does.
Now, you know, I love a rental business model.
It’s one of the four types of passive income.
You can quiz your friends what the other three are.
I’ll fill those in at the end of the show.
But today’s guest scaled his rental business in a unique way
by renting out other people’s RVs with their permission, of course.
Could you do the same thing?
Could you apply the same idea in a different niche?
Let’s stick around to find out from fireside RV rental.com Gar Russell.
Welcome to the Science Hustle Show.
Hey, Nick, thanks for having me.
Excited to be here with you.
Well, I’m excited for this one.
We’re covering how Gar convinced other owners to trust him with their RVs.
That’s a big step.
The logistics of running this thing and the bumps in the road along the way.
I want to start off with you have this idea like it’s going to be a fantastic
birthday present for your lovely bride or an anniversary present, rather.
And hey, honey, we got this RV.
Let’s go. We’re going to have all these fun times in the woods.
Imagining the years of outdoor fun and adventure ahead of you.
And her reaction is not quite what you’re hoping it will be.
Yeah, we got to the campground and we got set up.
I thought all was going well the first morning when she’s chasing our toddler
around and seven months pregnant with number four.
And she said, I’m going home, baby.
And I thought, oh, what did I forget?
And I didn’t forget anything.
She was just miserable and she was done camping.
And we were supposed to be there six more days.
Yeah, so that’s not how anybody wanted it to go down.
No, no, not at all.
And I went right into panic mode of, oh my gosh, I just bought this RV
for a lot of money and my wife doesn’t want to be here
and jumped onto Craigslist and threw it up for rent.
OK, so you’ve got this big expensive asset slash liability at the moment.
But hopefully it turns into an asset sitting in the driveway and said,
well, shoot, what am I going to do with this thing?
So you turn around and put up for rent on Craigslist.
What kind of reaction does that get?
Any takers? Yeah, you know, it blew my mind.
I literally had inquiries coming in within a couple of hours.
So the light bulb like immediately went off.
People are, hey, I need it for this weekend
because that was in July when I purchased it for.
So it’s like in the middle of summer and people are, oh, hey,
we’re going camping this weekend or that weekend.
You know, sure. So it was it was wild.
Any sort of like driver vetting?
Do you need like a commercial license to drive on these things?
I’d be intimidated driving around something in that size.
No, you go right to what people typically ask
when I ask them for their RV is, OK, who’s going to be driving this?
What’s that going to look like?
And so, yeah, there’s just like Airbnb and Toro.
There’s peer-to-peer platforms for this industry.
So they have the insurance and the driver
verifications and security deposits and, you know, all the things.
All right. So that is in place now.
What was your process early on of starting out?
Well, no. So when I started, there was who is still the main platform,
RVshare.com. They were up and running.
They started in 2013. I started in 2016.
I just sort of running rentals like right through RVshare
to use their insurance and all that stuff.
Oh, OK, OK, so we got some initial traction on Craigslist.
But hey, go check out my listing or go check out my profile book
through RVshare, one of the leading platforms outdoorsy being the other one
where it’s the peer-to-peer marketplace.
It’s the Toro. It’s the Airbnb for renting RVs.
So there was an existing demand here.
And I think that’s probably an important place to start is saying, well,
wasn’t necessarily reinventing the wheel.
It was like, hey, I’m going to go put my buy button up for sale on some place
where people are already looking for this thing to go rent this thing.
And so there was a precedent for doing that rather than
trying to create demand out of nowhere.
Exactly. Yeah.
What did you charge for those first weekend rentals?
Maybe like 100, 125 dollars a night or something like that.
OK, gosh, I imagine I remember these things were
completely blown up during the pandemic.
Like, well, I can’t do anything. I want to go camping, go rent an RV.
Or I rent a spinner van.
And sometimes it’d be like two fifty, three hundred bucks a night
for some of these like nicer decked out vans.
Oh, yeah, yeah, you can pay a premium.
We’ve got some nice like Super C diesels and some nice class B’s
and some big class A’s that, yeah, rent for four hundred dollars or more a night.
We just had a guy that paid six thousand dollars
to have an RV delivered from Alabama to Michigan
for a festival because he liked that unit so much that
it just was an incidental.
The money was just OK, what’s the cost?
And wow, he had had it for teledague races
and he wanted it for another event he was going to.
Was there a target occupancy or target monthly income
that you’re trying to hit to offset the payment, the depreciation?
Like something that would make it less of like, ah, you know,
this big money pit sitting in the driveway.
In the heat of the moment, no, it was literally just getting away
from the pain of feeling like a weirdo for buying a camper that my wife hated.
Then as things scaled and escalated,
yeah, then you start getting a little more granular and like, OK,
for the wear and tear on this and ours was a total, I always say,
towable travel trailer or drivable RV to help people differentiate.
Ours was a towable travel trailer.
So there wasn’t as much wear and tear like engine, you know, mileage,
generator, stuff like that.
OK, I’m picturing like an airstream or something
that would like attach to a hitch or like a fifth wheel.
Yeah, exactly.
That was our first that started this business.
Yeah, it was a towable.
Interesting.
And then for somebody starting out on RV share,
what kind of best practices did you find to get listing to your attention?
He’s like, OK, Craig’s list kind of I guess people will be seeking it out.
But now, all of a sudden, if you’re on these platforms,
you’re competing with dozens of other listings in your areas.
Like, well, how do I make mine the one that they click on and want to book?
Just like anything else, honestly, real estate,
throwing something up on marketplace.
Pitchers is obviously a huge one painting a picture for somebody
like them seeing themselves inside of that travel trailer,
seeing their family inside of that is the layout going to work.
Is it going to have the right amenities that it needs?
So that’s something that I realized was important right off the bat
is really helping people understand because these people that were renting
my camper, they weren’t campers.
They just wanted to go camping.
So I was really painting a really clear picture for them fast forward down the road
to we’ve got 45 locations across the country now.
Franchise is doing this competing with others.
It’s all about creating value, showing the value where so many people
that jump on these platforms are just lowering their prices, lowering their prices.
You know, like, hey, $40 a night rent my camper.
So our whole thing is showing value.
It is interesting as you walk down that road and you scale
and you start to really think about your market and the best way to serve them.
Right at a certain price per night, it doesn’t pay for the hassle
of dealing with the logistics and the wear and tear on the thing.
And just I don’t know if that’s worthwhile.
It’s going to make sure it is worthwhile.
Exactly, yeah, especially on the drivable RVs, where you’re putting miles
on an engine and wear and tear as you’ve got to be very mindful of depreciation.
Depreciation is a great side of this because just like real estate, you can depreciate it.
But also, like you mentioned at the beginning there, this is a liability to start.
It’s not like a piece of real estate where it’s going to appreciate.
It’s depreciating the moment you buy it.
So it’s very mindful of that.
All right.
So you start to see some traction on RV share a little bit through the Craigslist ad.
You say, OK, there might be something here.
I’m no longer losing money on this thing or I’m no longer losing as much money on this thing.
You’re like, well, the way to scale is more inventory here.
There’s only so many weekends in the month.
There’s only so many days in the month somebody could rent this thing.
So if I want more inventory, I got to go out and find more RVs.
So what is this conversation like?
How do you find the first people to say, like, have I got it?
A business proposition for you.
I’m going to rent some strangers or let some strangers into your vacation vehicle here.
And I’ll give you a cut of the proceeds.
Like, what are these conversations start?
So it didn’t start with that model, what I call the OPRV model.
It really started with I need more RVs.
So literally, fast forward to the end of August.
We’re having number four that my wife was miserable with in July pregnant.
All of our kids were born on C sections, VSC sections.
So literally, it’s like scheduled, you know what you’re going to do?
You check into the room. It’s like, OK, maybe it’s here.
You’re in the room.
So I get my wife and baby checked into the room.
And then literally, I’m like, all right, honey, I’ll be right back.
And where was I going?
I was headed to the dealership to buy four more RVs.
Oh, my gosh. OK.
And she’s like, oh, OK, she’s been an entrepreneurial spouse for long enough to know.
Like, we just do weird things like that as entrepreneurs.
But literally, as I’m doing that, the Lord was like, OPRV.
That’s when I got the OPRV method was God telling me that.
I still went and bought the RVs because I’m already driving there.
I’m a little dense. It takes me a little bit to catch on.
But a couple of weeks later, that’s when it clicked like, no, it’s other people’s assets.
So that’s when I started reaching out to other people like, hey,
I want to take your RV and rent it.
And it was literally one or two things.
First person I asked was my sister-in-law, and she’s like, that’s gross.
Like, someone’s not sleeping in my bed.
That’s a very bad idea.
That’s what I imagined the reaction was going to be like, I know, thanks.
We bought it for our own family.
Like, yeah, that’s weird.
And then I reached out to my best friend, Jeremy.
And Jeremy was like, dude, that’s sweet for sure.
Sign me up, man.
And so there was unit number two and it went on from there.
What was the proposal?
What was like the rev share?
What kind of pitch did you come to it with?
It was very simple.
It’s, hey, I’ll do all the work and we’ll split the revenue 50/50.
So he had a nine to five.
I didn’t, I owned some businesses in real estate and I had freedom in my
schedule to do different things.
That was the presentation was I’m going to do all the work.
We split the revenue 50/50.
How did you deal with getting the RVs to the customers?
I guess it’s all local or they come to your place and pick it up.
Or, you know, just, I think of like moving vehicles all around, like with rental
cars, like I pick it up at the airport and then I fly away and drop it off.
Like it’s somewhat easier.
But in this case, it’s like, well, where do I store the thing?
Now, if you got five of them, where do I store these things?
Plus, you know, trying to meet people where they’re at.
Yeah, it was me and my truck and moving units around.
And I lived on some acreage.
So I decided, OK, I should probably start grouping these things together
logistically to make a little bit easier myself.
And then I got a violation from the city that I wasn’t zone to do that.
So then it moved into, all right, well, I want to keep doing this.
So we got a parking lot that we run it out.
OK, OK, one from there to we got our own facility.
We’re like, well, we can collect storage on these when they’re not being used.
So we’ll get a facility that’ll cover overhead for the facility, the storage fees.
And it just, yeah, one thing to the next.
Next thing you know, I have RV tax working for me and I and I have storage
and I sell propane and we have a dump station and all these different things.
Oh, sorry, explain the storage fees.
Sorry, I’m confused on that part.
Most people pay to store their RV a storage facility.
So OK, yeah, we just ended up grouping them together.
And that’s how a lot of our franchises run today is they just partner
with a storage facility near them and they group the RVs there.
So for them, they don’t have a lot of that overhead
as far as having to have like a brick and mortar and all that overhead.
Got it. OK, here’s the centralized parking lots to come and pick everything
and go on your way for your trip. OK, exactly. Yeah. Got it.
All right, Gar’s got his first OPRV on board.
He’s proven out the concept.
And now he’s on the hunt for more owners who will let him run out their RVs.
That process and more coming up right after this.
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All right. So you get the first OPRV on board and say,
“Hey, all the other work, we’ll split the revenue, sounds good, deal, sign me up.”
What happens after that?
It’s like trying to find, you know, RV campsites nearby
and like canvassing people, although those might be renters themselves.
Or you go into RV owner Facebook groups and saying,
“Hey, have you ever thought about this, but trying to approach it in a non-skizzy way
and get kicked out of the group? How does the scale?”
It’s scaled on the finding the renter side.
I would create ads on Craigslist for rent.
And then really, I just leaned on the peer-to-peer platforms.
So RV, Share, Outdoorsy and there’s a couple others.
They were basically handling my lead generation as far as finding me renters.
Sure. And then defining owner side, that’s really easy.
I mean, there’s RVs, there’s over 12 million RVs sitting around doing nothing.
So what I did was someone had an RV in their driveway and knocked on their door,
went to storage facilities, tried to strike up deals like mom and pop facilities
to talk to their owners.
And then just like, you know, if you’re renting your house on Airbnb,
they have Airbnb Facebook groups.
I started joining those groups for people that were renting their RV
and just kind of sharing, hey, if you find like this is too much work for you
with your nine to five, I’m happy to do the work for you.
And then just kind of sharing my entrepreneurial history and real estate.
OK, like an Airbnb property manager or like a co-hosted Airbnb thing,
like where you still own the asset.
Hey, we’re not going to buy it from you.
We are going to take a percentage.
We’re going to handle the booking requests.
We’re going to handle the customer interaction, the cleaning, all that stuff.
And you can still make money from it.
Yeah, exactly. If you like renting your RV, but you don’t like the work so much,
we’ll do the work for you.
OK, so targeting, it sounds like people starting out who were used to that idea
rather than trying to force yourself upon the market of just those 12 million
RV owners who maybe hadn’t considered that as an income stream.
They just have it for personal use and they don’t really care.
I imagine you could probably convert some of those, but going after the people
who are open to renting it or have proven to be open to it already.
That’s a warmer market to tackle.
Yeah, and especially now post COVID, like you talked about everybody
RVing and everybody buying an RV during COVID.
Yeah.
Now, a lot of our pool that we draw from is just Facebook Marketplace.
Just going on there and just sharing the concept with people.
Hey, I see your RVs for sale.
It’s beautiful.
If you find that you’re getting lowball offers and maybe you need to pay
your principal down some, we’ve got a program that we’ve created to help with that.
If you want more information, we’d love to tell you.
Interesting.
Yeah, it’s a really interesting product class because of that super,
super low utilization rate where it’s like, it probably sits around 50
weeks out of the year.
I mean, some of the stats on cars sit idle 22 hours a day or something.
It’s like, for this, it’s got to be even more average it out on a daily basis.
And so that makes it a really interesting asset to try and try and improve
that a little bit.
Hey, sitting around, let’s let some other families enjoy it.
We’ll put some money in your pocket and go from there.
So you start to get some traction doing that and trying to manage primarily local
or is it kind of branching out geographically at this point?
I imagine with different Facebook groups, it’s a nationwide or international audience.
Yeah, when we started, it was primarily local.
We kind of found our niche.
A lot of people going to specific state parks for family camping trips.
And so we would kind of figure out where we would want to serve as far as how
far we’d want to deliver and stuff like that.
Yeah, it’s just amazing.
There’s campgrounds everywhere.
There’s storage facilities everywhere.
There’s RV dealerships everywhere.
It’s kind of like you buy a red car, then all of a sudden you realize somebody
red cars are out there on the roads.
RVing is everywhere.
It’s what a lot of Americans do.
What’s the one I used to always see in RV America?
Or it’s like one big, it seems to be a nationwide rental outfit.
Yeah, Cruise America.
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Yeah, so Cruise America is still around.
They’re the billboard on wheels, basically.
It’s really interesting because learning the RV industry now over the years, a
lot of dealerships used to rent RVs out.
And that was a lead generation tool for them.
That was a way to take new inventory, make some money off it, appreciate it a
little bit and then turn around and sell it used.
And then there was like this mass Exodus and basically who’d you have left?
Cruise America.
There’s a couple other guys out West.
And then in 2013, this industry just came up out of nowhere.
It was literally the founder of RV share took his family on a camping trip.
When he got back, he’s like, all right, well, I traveled across the country
like I wanted to do.
Now I have this RV.
What do I do with that?
I’m going to rent it out.
And he went online to look for a platform and there wasn’t one.
Yeah.
And that’s how RV share was birthed.
Is the Cruise America model more like a rental car business where they own the
units or is it similar?
Whereas like, well, the ones that I remember seeing were all pretty uniform.
It seemed to be like the same model.
Yeah.
Cruise America, they have them built in batches and it’s similar models.
And they kind of operate a little bit like U-Haul, like they’ll partner with
businesses that have a little bit of real estate where they can park some
RVs and they give them a percentage of the revenue.
Yeah.
No, I love the rental business model.
If I’m pausing, it’s because my gears are turning and like, well, what other?
Maybe it’s industrial equipment or something.
I’m thinking about the stuff that I would go and rent for my painting business.
Like, well, this big 40 foot ladder.
Or I wouldn’t make sense to own that because you only needed it maybe once
or twice per season, but you go to the United rentals, I think was the place.
And you rent this for the day or rent this for the week.
If you needed it on the job site, it’s like, what are the other things with
like super low utilization, maybe kind of a high upfront cost?
Where do I really want to buy that?
Especially from the point of view of the RV vacationer.
Do I really want to buy this?
I would love to just rent it for the week.
Like that seems lower risk, lower overhead.
We’ll see if we like it, a trial run type of thing.
So if I pause, that’s where I’m like, what else could you rent out?
So yeah, I like that.
It is amazing with RVs.
It’s almost like a time share.
When you buy it, it’s like, it seems like the best idea ever.
You know, my gosh, we’re going to go there all the time and memories and all
these things and you realize Johnny’s got practice and you got X amount of
weeks of vacation a year and I don’t know, do we load the RV up just to go away
for the weekend and you know, is it worth it?
And you get your avid RVers.
I mean, heck, we literally full time RV for almost five years while we were
building this business, we had a blast and we loved the lifestyle.
But most Americans, it’s like, yeah, it’s our most of the year.
You think that full time RV experience was an asset in having conversations
with RV owners.
I guess if people are doing it full time, they don’t have the capacity to go
and rent it out for extra income.
But like you were in the space.
Like you knew you could speak the lingo, you know, it was funny.
I didn’t really spend a lot of time sales and marketing like on the road.
We would work hard during the summer with our business, make a really good
amount of money and then we would just travel around all winter.
And so it’s kind of like the brain was turned off a little bit and hindsight
what I’ve learned about marketing the last couple of years.
I’m like, oh my gosh, I could have created so much content and done so
much blogging and this and that, but I wish I could do that all over again.
But yeah, it was really it was the business model.
When I started to duplicate it, that’s how I presented it was.
I called it the six figure summer.
You work your tail off for about five, six months.
You have about 20, 25 RVs in your fleet.
Do you crush it during the summer and then you travel during the winter?
That’s the business model I built because we, we homeschool our four kids.
We love to travel and do life together.
That was the thought when we created it, when we turn it into a biz opportunity
that we sold to others as well.
Yeah.
I admire the ability to turn it off.
And say, hey, six figure summer, had a great season.
We’ll do it again next year versus, well, what about the fall season?
What about if we did six figure, maybe we could do multi.
You have this kind of concept that I call gravy time.
How long into the year do you need to work to cover your annual expenses?
The average, I want to say, based on a five percent savings rate is like
people are working to the second week of December before they’re like,
okay, I’ve covered my expenses, right?
And I have this really thin margin at the end of the year.
We’ve met other people who are like, I’m good.
By March, I’m good.
I booked enough work.
I’m happy.
It’s like, ah, you know, the ability to kind of turn it off, dial it back.
I really like that.
I really like this concept of the six figure summer.
I wanted to ask for, as you’re signing on other RV owners to kind of be
their rental agent, their property manager, so to speak, handle these rental bookings.
Is there a typical target?
And it’s going to vary based on market and seasonality and all that.
But in terms of the monthly occupancy rate or the monthly income, any metrics
that you could share on that front for like, what is this thing sitting in the
driveway realistically worth?
Even ballpark ranges would be fine.
Yeah, I can tell you our average is based on our historical data.
Like this year, the average booking is six days this year.
The average net to the travel trailer owner is right around three to five
hundred dollars per booking.
If it’s a drivable RV, it’s about five to seven hundred dollars per booking.
And then based on the location, if it’s a seasonal location or if it’s
Florida, Arizona, California, somewhere like that, if it’s a seasonal location,
they’re going to do about seven to 10 bookings per summer.
And then a year round location could do double that.
So that’s kind of a starting point that we give people as far as the owner, as
far as how much they can earn.
And then also there’s the right offside of it, too.
They get to depreciate the RV, which is great.
They get to write off, you know, the insurance and repairs and maintenance
and stuff like that.
If you’re not renting it out, then there’s no depreciation you can claim
because it’s not seen as like a business asset.
Exactly.
Yeah.
I’ve had investors that have literally purchased Class C drivable RVs just
to offset taxes.
Yeah, I imagine that depending on the vehicle, that might be worth more than
the 500 bucks per booking.
Yeah.
Interesting.
Okay, that’s helpful.
And are you still doing 50/50 rev share split or has that adjusted over time
during this kind of like pre-franchise phase?
Yeah, so we still do a 50/50 revenue split.
We just now we have a platform fee that comes off the top.
So like RV share, they get 25% commission.
Okay.
All their owners.
We have a corporate agreement with them because we’re their largest customer.
And then outdoors, you know, so all the platforms have their fees.
So just across the board, we take a 15% off the top and then we split the revenue
after that.
Okay.
And the reason I ask is, well, if I’m going to take the OPRV model to another
niche, to another product class, like, okay, what’s typical?
So yeah, there’s going to be the platform fee and then the kind of like agency fee
that will do it all for you fee of handling the stuff.
And then after they come back, is it like Airbnb, you know, attack on a cleaning
fee or is that kind of taken out of the booking?
And you got to coordinate cleaners to come through and make sure it’s ready
for the next guest.
Add-ons are a great extra revenue source for the franchisees.
We have some bookings that you’d be amazed.
It’s like a weekend booking.
It’s cost them like maybe $600, $700.
They have $800 in add-ons.
Like they got the linen’s package.
They got the kitchen package.
They got the s’mores kit.
They got the chairs.
They rented the kayaks.
So the list goes on and on and on, especially when people are like flying in.
If they’re coming in, like we work with Talladega, Bonnaroo Music Festival,
Burning Man, the different events like that, equestrian events.
Okay.
People will pay a premium like to fly in, have it loaded with groceries.
That’s at the airport ready for them or it’s delivered right to the infield of
the raceway.
Yeah, we have bookings where somebody will literally come in for a weekend and
they’re dropping $3,000 to $5,000 for a weekend rental.
Wow.
Okay, catering to a different level of affluence in certain cases.
Like, hey, we’re going to make it easy for you.
That’s the cool thing about it is it’s wheel estate, right?
It’s a house on wheels.
So it’s so multifaceted.
Like we work with insurance companies.
We’ve had several RVs in the last couple months go just to be parked
alongside someone’s house.
There was fire damage, water damage.
The insurance company is paying us $4,000 to $6,000 a month to set up an RV on
the side of the house or hurricanes.
During COVID, I get a power plant in Michigan that orders 72 travel trailers
as quarantine units for their electrical engineers.
Okay.
Yeah, maybe not the intended use case, but a use case nonetheless.
Yeah.
So I facilitate that order.
I go and I buy three rental properties from that.
That was phenomenal.
That’s interesting.
And then to go back to the cleaning and turnover thing, is that just have a team
of house cleaners that could also clean RVs on location near these kind of
parking center storage center type of places that can handle the turnover.
Yeah.
So you find people that clean air B and B is, you know, it’s such an interesting
concept to people that a lot of times if you, Hey, I’m looking for someone to
clean campers, like they don’t even respond to the ad.
But if you go into a Facebook group and you’re Aaron, you say, Hey, I’m looking
for somebody who cleans short term rentals.
Now all of a sudden you got 35 people messaging you saying, Oh yeah, I can do
that for you.
And then he’s, okay, great.
It’s the same thing with like delivering the campers.
My famous ad was always, Hey, I’m looking for old retired guys with
trucks that are bored, you know, and then you get a bunch of people that laugh
and comment and this and that.
And then they message you, Hey, what do you got?
I’m an old retired guy with a truck.
Like, well, actually I need someone to deliver campers for me to the campgrounds.
I have guys that literally they’re like, God, just give me gas money.
They’re like, I’m having so much fun doing this.
I just like it’s camping growing up.
This is a blast.
Husband and wife teams are cleaning the campers, delivering them, having a blast
together.
It’s amazing how quick you can pull together a team when it comes to this.
Okay.
Fascinating.
I love that ad.
Hey, we’ll do it for free.
Just cover the gas more with Gar in just a moment, including some of the things
that can happen on the open road and how to protect yourself from those.
And why he chose the franchise model to scale operations even further.
All that and more coming up right after this.
Obviously you have the bad side to it too.
Just like anything else.
We had people show up to pick up RVs that had no business being in an RV that
we’re just mad because they couldn’t go to Max score or whatever.
This thing is horrible.
It’s, I’m not taking this thing.
And there’s nothing wrong with it.
They’re just miserable.
Anything else on that horror story list or the mistakes or.
Oh yeah.
We’ve got horror stories for sure.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The biggest one we have that we get a hoot out of is there was a couple of
ladies in Pennsylvania.
They were renting an RV for a couple of months.
They were going all the way to California and back brand new RV day.
Number two, they wake up.
They have bed bug bites like head to toe bed bug bites.
We’re getting treatments.
We’re getting them hotels.
We’re getting them rental cars.
We’re like, ladies, do your, you’re like, my saying was always like, no rental
canceled, like we’ll get them through because if you’re an RV or you get it,
like things go wrong, things break.
That’s like part of the RV experience.
Like things are going to happen, right?
It’s a house going down the road shaking and things are, it just, things happen.
We got these ladies all the way to California and back and come to find out.
We’re just, you know, we’re like, what in the world happened?
We’re talking to the owner of this RV and trying to just figure this out.
She’s like, well, it’s not me.
I work at a women’s shelter.
I deal with bed bugs all the day.
I know it’s nothing to do with me.
Nothing to do with you.
The light bulb goes off.
Well, you work at a women’s shelter.
You deal with bed bugs all day long and your brand new RV has bed bugs in it.
You don’t think there’s any connection there?
Yikes.
Yeah.
That’s challenging.
Have you ever had the example of, I guess if you do enough volume, it’s
bound to happen, but somebody damaging the vehicle or trashing the vehicle or
like, how do you protect the owners from something like that?
Same as Airbnb and Toro, there’s insurance, there’s security deposits,
there’s driver verifications, there’s contracts, but it definitely happens.
That’s one of the things that I encouraged by franchisees on.
When you’re talking to RV owners, if they’re super hyper sensitive about
people being in their RV or damages is just let them know, hey, this
probably isn’t the program for you because obviously there’s, you know,
some emotional connection to that RV, which makes sense.
And damages are going to happen.
I mean, I just had issues with my Airbnb last weekend, whether it’s a
house and RV or whatever.
I mean, people are going to not show proper respect and certain scenarios.
And two, just things are going to happen.
Things are going to break.
So that definitely does happen for sure.
Yeah, you found the platform insurance is adequate or they’re reasonably
responsive to customer service requests when stuff like that does come through.
Yeah.
Yeah, they’re great.
RV share is phenomenal.
We just had a situation with RV share where there was some damages.
The security deposit did not process on their credit card.
The renter’s credit card.
We caught it too late.
RV share just sent us the money.
They’re phenomenal.
Do I need a commercial license to go drive a 30 footer?
Like, it seems huge.
Yeah, you would think so.
You really would because you can get a drivable RV up to 42 foot long.
Yeah, it’s the size of a school bus.
Yeah, people are literally buying these things at the dealership.
You got a 70 year old retired couple that are like, all right, thanks.
This is great.
We’re hitting the road and they’re just pulling out the road.
Like, there’s no licensing.
There’s no requirement.
They can be in these huge, monstrous diesel built on Freightliner chassis.
That’s a six figure class A’s and they’re just on the road.
Okay.
Yeah, that’s, I mean, I guess positive that it’s accessible to everybody.
Nerve racking, if that is your baby that some Rindo, no experienced person
has taken out onto the highway for the first time.
Yeah, the class A’s definitely, those are the number one damage RVs out of all of them
because they’re just huge the way that you’re sitting on it and you’re turning
radius and the swing in the back and stuff like that.
Yeah.
Is there a sweet spot that you like to play in in terms of the class or the
size of RV or trailer?
Bunkhouse, travel trailers and fifth wheels are very popular because the
audience that we’re seeking to serve is families typically.
So it’s typically the family.
They’re going on their summer family camping trip.
They’re going to be at a state park for a week or it’s the family.
They’re getting in a driveable RV.
They’re going to Disney.
They’re going to California and so on.
And then the big class A’s, those are typically rented more for like the high
end events where people are flying in.
They want everything top of the line.
They’re not even driving their RV.
It’s getting delivered there and they’re just showing up to use it.
Okay.
Talk to me about the next stage of this business because I think this is an
interesting fork in the road.
So you find something that works.
You’re signing up these other RV owners.
You’re collecting your fee.
They’re getting booked.
They’re making money.
Everybody is happy.
You’re dealing with the headaches as they come up like any entrepreneur does.
So we found something that works.
But to really scale this thing, we need to go really broad.
We need to be in more geographies and it’s just difficult to do.
So we need like boots on the ground.
We need franchisees in these different areas.
So you start to franchise fireside RVRental.com versus, you know, an alternative
path would have been like, I’ll create the online course on how to start an RV
business or just continue to hire local branch managers.
Like there’s different paths.
So what attracted you to the franchise model?
Because this is mired in red tape, regulatory standpoint.
Does it get a franchise approved if my understanding is correct?
Yeah, very much is.
I think it was my entrepreneurial that kind of led me up to this one.
My entrepreneurial journey.
I owned a credit counseling company and I created like a business in a box
opportunity to show other people how to do what I was doing.
And my whole niche was creating homeowners.
I’d build a real estate portfolio, multifamily unit rental properties.
And I’d done a good job of automating and systems and people running my rentals for me.
Like I didn’t use property management companies.
I had people that worked for me and then my credit.
So it was kind of all the combination of things that led up to this to where once
I decided, okay, to continue to scale this, what do I want to do?
And really what I wanted to do is I wanted to create passive continuity.
I wanted to create reoccurring income.
And what was a way for me to do that, it was to have the model where I’m showing
somebody, but I’m also offering them support and I’m getting a percentage of the revenue.
So it actually happened through one of the Facebook groups for this industry up here
to peer Facebook group.
I was just in there sharing.
You know, you’re all excited about the thing that you’re doing, you know,
something there and I’m teaching people and sharing and this and that.
Some guy says, Hey, why don’t you start one of those up here in the upper
peninsula of Michigan?
Yeah.
And I was down in the lower peninsula, West Michigan.
I said, Yeah, let’s do it, man.
I said, tell you what, you be my guinea pig and we’ll start it.
I won’t charge you anything.
And then we’ll prove the model and then go from there.
And so that’s what I did.
And he’s still with us today, Kim, Kim in the upper peninsula of Michigan.
Okay.
Okay.
Yep.
And then I turned it into like a biz in a box.
I charged $995 and then I got a percentage of their revenue.
And then I had my office girls who were like answering the inquiries and
offering ongoing support to get a percentage of the revenue.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
So it was kind of a hybrid model, like this education component, plus
ongoing support, plus we’ll still take a, you succeed.
We succeed type of thing.
We’re still going to take a fee.
Okay.
Yeah.
So it’s like, yeah, kind of a white glove service and we offer this and that.
And then it went to, okay, now it’s $5,000.
Now it’s $10,000.
And now we offer this and we offer that.
And now we’re going to manage your website and your social media.
Oh, we negotiated a special agreement with RV share.
You get part of that agreement.
And I had a handful of locations.
My location was running on autopilot.
I had sold my credit counseling business on owner finance.
I had built a decent real estate portfolio.
So I had a good amount of revenue coming in from all these sources.
And so I just, I really got kind of passive and was just hanging out.
And there was the Lord again.
He said, it’s time to franchise.
I said, no, thank you.
And a week or a month later, he’s like, it’s time to franchise.
And it was a couple of months conversation.
Finally, I did it just like you said, right?
Red tape.
I mean, this, it cost me six figures to do it.
It took over a year to do it.
It was, I mean, our franchise disclosure documents, like 200 pages, not wired that
way.
I want to run and hustle and grind.
I don’t want documents and red tape and FTC and all that kind of stuff.
But I did it.
We walked through the process and here we are today.
Well, very good.
You’re signing up people all over the place to start their own fireside RV
rental chapter franchise in their local area.
You said 45 locations around the country at this point.
Yeah.
I think we got about 45 locations and hundreds and hundreds of RVs under management.
Yeah.
It’s just world domination.
One RV at a time.
Fascinating.
Is there a target that you say, we want to be in the top
hundred RV market?
Like, how do you even measure?
Like, where does this thing go?
We want a hundred franchisees.
We want some level of bookings every season or something.
You know, it’s interesting as you grow as an entrepreneur, your goals are
constantly changing, right?
The goal was, okay, I want a eight figure valuation by the end of 2024.
That was the goal, the beginning of last year.
And then the goal, I just went to a conference mastermind junkie.
I just, I love going to conferences and learning and all that.
And then after I just went to this recent conference, I’m like, okay, the
goal is 250 locations by the end of 2024.
One of the speakers there was Dr. Benjamin Hardy.
And he spoke on his book, 10X is easier than 2X.
He just talked about just set goals that like completely blow out the floor.
You have to rethink everything.
Like you’re starting from scratch.
So I talked to my business partner like 250 locations.
That’s the goal.
So we hired a marketing firm and we got leads just flooding every day.
And then it was really, it was like, none of those are my goals anymore.
It’s really just serving the people that join our community and just living a
balanced life is the goal now.
So we do that, right?
We’re generating 40, 50 franchise leads a day.
I’m on 30, 40 calls a week, I hire a sales rep.
He’s on 30, 40 calls.
And I’m in this extreme imbalance.
I’m like, I don’t want that.
You know, I want the balance.
I want, you’re constantly reevaluating, you know, as an entrepreneur.
It’s amazing how quickly the goals turn and shift.
Yeah.
You get used to a certain level of success and comfort.
And then the goalpost moves again.
It’s some level of hedonic adaptation, but it’s some level of going back to
your six figure summer and saying, well, how much is enough?
What are we doing this for?
Are we, we’re good, you know, it’s going back to the time with the family,
supporting the people in the community, being a part of that community.
I think it’s definitely an interesting one.
I appreciate you sharing all of that.
Mywheelestatestory.com, that’s Wheel Estate, like wheels on your RV.
You can check out Gar’s book over there.
Mywheelestatestory.com, love it.
And FiresideRVRental.com, you can check them out over there.
Let’s wrap this thing up with your number one tip for side hustle nation.
All work works.
I’ve really been digging that saying the last year is as entrepreneurs, we do
something and it doesn’t work out the way that we think it does, that it should.
And we think it was a failure, but really all work, all action that we take works.
And it’s either working on us, it’s changing us.
It’s helping us to grow as a person, overcome insecurities, fears, doubts
worries, or it’s doing the thing we want to do.
It’s working for us, like there’s results, right?
We’re generating, we’re adding customers, the business is growing.
But I just, I want to encourage people in that all work works.
So it works on you, it works for you.
But the biggest thing is don’t stop doing the things, don’t stop doing the work.
And do you have an example of some work that didn’t work out the way you wanted it to?
You’re like, I reached a dead end and now I got to go back.
You know, just with the recent marketing that we started doing, we hired a marketing firm
that just for their monthly services, it was $10,000 a month plus our ad spend.
And that was a huge step of faith for us.
And what we realized was after these two and a half months that we were with them is
all we really needed to do was increase our ad spend.
But it was when I had that all in, like we’re going to 250 locations.
Yeah.
Kind of dropping the floor out from under me.
It was, OK, we’re all in.
So we hired this marketing firm.
Yeah, we learned a bunch of amazing stuff from them.
But the biggest thing we learned is really if we would have simply just increased
because that’s part of what they had us do.
We increased our ad spend by five fold.
If we would have just done that to begin with, we would have been very similar results.
Save the $10,000 fee.
Yeah, but you think, right?
OK, we’re going big leagues now.
We need to do all these things.
And we did learn some amazing things and we’re still using them on a lower scale.
But it was funny in hindsight.
We learned like really, we just could have increased our ad spend.
But we learned a lot about our metrics and how much it costs us to book a call
and our average customer value.
We learned a lot of important things.
So the work definitely worked inside of us and taught us a bunch of stuff.
But really what worked for us was just increasing our ad spend by five times.
All right, fair enough.
But it’s one of those things where, like you said, all work works.
You don’t know until you test it out and see what happens.
So I appreciate you sharing that.
And I think that is definitely relevant for side hustle show listeners.
Like you might be feeling like you’re grinding away at something.
But even if it’s not getting you the results you want, it is still hopefully
resulting in some level of education or improving your skills and processes
in some area that you can pivot and apply to something else if need be.
Or, you know, to keep on going and breaking through all work works.
That may be a new one from six hundred and something episodes.
I may not have heard that one before.
So I like that one couple of takeaways for me before we wrap.
And number one is thinking of these expensive underutilized assets.
That’s the sweet spot to make a rental business work where especially
and maybe a bulky item that somebody may not want to travel with.
Like we had a mobility scooter rental episode.
That was really interesting.
We’ve seen people do this with photo booths
with what’s called like a champagne wall or like a donut peg board
that we rent out for like weddings or something.
It’s like it’ll cost you one afternoon and a hundred bucks worth of materials
to build this thing.
You rent it out for a hundred bucks per wedding.
I love businesses like that.
So I think that’s fascinating stuff and then just tapping into existing
marketplaces, the RV shares of the world.
Like if something like that exists in whatever niche that you are considering,
that’s probably a good sign.
And if you can go and recruit other people to say, hey, have you ever thought
about putting your thing up for rent there or even if you are.
But maybe it’s a pain like you mentioned with the other RV owner.
Like is it really worth the time effort?
Oh, hey, we’ll do all the work for you.
Just pay us half the fee and we’ll take care of it for you.
Make it easy, make it easy.
Now, we’ve been chatting RVs in this episode, but like we’ve kind of tossed
in here or there, certainly not the only things that you can rent out for a profit.
Get your creative juices flow and I want to invite you to download
your exclusive listener only bonus for this episode.
That’s my list of 25 other unconventional rental ideas.
Just hit the link in the episode description.
You’ll be able to grab that for free.
Now, as promised at the top of the show, we talked about four types of passive income.
One is Gar’s model, renting out other people’s stuff or renting.
You don’t have to be other people’s stuff, but just renting something out.
Get paid over and over again from something that you buy once.
Love it. And maybe maybe you don’t even have to buy it.
I think it’s a creative example.
So that’s number one.
Number two is to buy cash flowing assets.
This is the old takes money to make money option.
This could be dividend investing.
This could be real estate.
This could be business lending, stuff like that.
Great model.
If the important part, if you already have money to invest.
That’s the bottleneck for most people.
Third one is to build assets.
This is the sweat equity option.
This is building something of value.
It could be a digital product.
It could be a website.
It could be a collection of YouTube videos on a video channel.
Could earn advertising revenue.
This is the space that I have typically played in the sweat equity option,
trying to build passive income assets.
Obviously takes a lot of time, takes a lot of creative energy to do that,
but can run relatively passive or relatively time leveraged.
Sometimes for years, if set up right.
And the fourth one is probably the most overlooked one.
And this is what I call reverse passive income is what you earn when you cut
your ongoing monthly expenses.
You switch your cell phone providers, you cut out the gym membership.
You start working out from home.
It’s the saving money is go straight to your bottom line.
Reverse passive income model.
Those are the four that I teased at the top of the show.
But Gar, thanks so much for sharing your insight.
Big thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone.
You can hit up side hustle nation dot com slash deals for all the latest offers
from our sponsors in one place.
Thank you for supporting the advertisers that support the show.
That’s it for me.
Thank you so much for tuning in until next time.
Let’s go out there and make something happen.
And I’ll catch you in the next edition of the side hustle show.
Hustle on.
[BLANK_AUDIO]
Have you ever thought about renting out other people’s stuff for profit?
That’s exactly what Garr Russell from firesidervrental.com did with RVs (recreational vehicles), and he’s turned it into a thriving business.
Could you do the same thing? Could you apply this idea to a different niche?
I think there are some valuable lessons here for aspiring side hustlers in any niche.
Tune in to Episode 625 of the Side Hustle Show to learn:
- how to profit from renting out other people’s RVs
- the numbers behind a successful RV rental business
- creative ways to boost income with add-on services
- strategies for scaling to a nationwide operation
Full Show Notes: Getting Paid to Rent Out Other People’s Stuff
New to the Show? Get your personalized money-making playlist here!
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