August 13, 2025 • 22 mins
In this kickoff episode for season 2 of the RV LIFE Podcast, Jim welcomes RV LIFE founder and CEO Andy Robinowitz to share exciting news: The RV LIFE Podcast is merging with The RV Entrepreneur Podcast. Hear the story behind the decision, a look back at each show’s legacy, and what’s ahead for the new combined format.
From RV industry insights to travel tips and inspiring RV entrepreneur profiles, this next chapter promises to bring even more value to your RV lifestyle. Plus, Andy gives an inside look at RV LIFE’s mission to make RVing simple and the tools, community, and innovations that are driving it forward.
NOTE: This will take time. Please stay tuned as we refine the future of the RV LIFE Podcast to better serve you.
Meanwhile, let us know what you think!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm really excited In a couple of years when we look
back, I think we're going tohave connected a lot of the dots
.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Hello RV Life listeners.
It is an honor to share withyou my conversation with RV Life
founder and CEO, andyRabinowitz.
But wait, who am I?
Where's Patty?
What's going on?
Don't panic, we have answersfor you.
I'm Jim at RV Life, and some ofyou maybe have heard my voice
(00:26):
on the RV Entrepreneur Podcast.
My co-host and I have beensharing stories and profiles of
some amazing people working fromthe road for a couple of years
now, since RV Life acquired theshow.
Meanwhile, patty has beenproviding incredible content for
this audience, and now the timehas come to merge our two
programs.
We can't thank Patty enough forher contributions and wish her
(00:49):
the best in her future endeavors, and we're very excited about
this evolution of the RV Lifepodcast.
You'll soon be hearing all aboutthe RV lifestyle, with industry
insight, travel tips and moreRV entrepreneur profiles.
This is going to take some time, so we hope you'll stay tuned
(01:10):
and keep subscribing to getnotified about upcoming episodes
with our new format.
But RV Life is much more than apodcast.
You may know about our TripWizard app, or maybe you
subscribe to the RV Lifemagazine blog, get link in show
notes.
But did you know that RV Lifehosts various content sites and
(01:30):
dozens of RVing discussionforums.
There's a huge community andmore exciting developments in
the works to fulfill our missionto make RVing simple.
Hear all about it right now inmy discussion with the man
behind the curtain at RV Life,andy Rabinowitz.
Andy, thank you so much fordoing this.
This is long overdue.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Well, thank you very much for having me.
I'm excited to be here today.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Oh, it's a pleasure, and listeners may not know our
voices and they might have heardme on the RV Entrepreneur.
I'm really excited to sharewhat's going on here, but it may
come as a surprise to somelisteners, so maybe you could
first give us a quickintroduction about yourself and
why you decided to do thisepisode with me today.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Sure sure.
So my name is Andy Rabinowitzand I'm the founder of RV Life.
I started the first websitethat became turned into what is
now RV Life about 20, 25 yearsago or so.
So it's been.
It's been a while and you knowwe've got a lot of over the time
.
We've had a lot of evolutionand stuff, and so you know,
(02:37):
getting to join the call todayand talk to you about that, it's
going to be fun and exciting.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
It is.
I'm excited about it and I wantto get into all that and this
is the RV Life podcast and Iknow we exist to make RVing
simple.
But what is RV Life?
What is RV Life?
Speaker 1 (02:57):
Well, RV Life is a platform for RVers that allows
them to simplify the RVownership experience, and so it
all started with forums a coupledecades back, and then it
evolved into a campgrounddirectory, which was called RV
Park Reviews, then CampgroundReviews and now called RV Life
(03:20):
Campgrounds, and we also have RVTrip Wizard that was brought
into the fold.
We acquired a tool calledMaintain my RV, the RV
Entrepreneur Podcast and variousother RV-based websites and
tools.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
So let's take a little step back here and give a
little history lessons.
Why RV life?
What inspired that and how didthat evolve?
You were in this discussionforums quite a bit and I think
you might have dabbled in someother niches, but what inspired
you to go forward with RV life?
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Well, yeah, originally the very first site
that I ever started was onAirstream trailers, and that's
kind of how it got going.
And then, after working withAirstream forums for many years,
I sort of became a forum expertand started to reach out to
(04:19):
other RV forum owners or in somecases, they would reach out to
me owners, or in some cases,they would reach out to me and
often it was a matter ofadopting a resource that wasn't
going to be able to stay onlineunless somebody was able to host
it for them.
And so, before you knew it, Ihad a handful of RV forums and
hanging out with RVers all day,every day, on the forums, and
(04:40):
then it was there that we justtry and listen to our members
and hear what they're doing andwhat their needs are, so we
could serve them.
And we actually tried to set upa campground directory on
Airstream forums and it workedokay, but the mindshare was too
small.
We needed more people tocontribute to have anything of
(05:02):
substance.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
So I want to get down deep into those forums a bit.
A lot of people don't realizehow many different forums RV
Life maintains or facilitates,but you mentioned RV Trip Wizard
and some people may be aware ofthat.
At the core, rv Life is a suiteof products.
We're making RVing simple andhelp people journey with
confidence.
Many people might be aware ofTrip Wizard, the trip planning
(05:26):
app but can you give us somekind of overview of what all
that RV Life Pro has to offer?
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Yeah, so RV Life Pro is a subscription service that
we have that provides some ofthe tools that folks are, you
know, help them get on the road.
So basically you can turn yourphone into an RV safe GPS, a
trip planning tool that accesses, you know, our deep catalog of
(05:52):
campground data and it also hasaccess to the maintenance
program and we have somemasterclasses and other things
that are part of thatsubscription service and it's
just certain features of RV Lifeare behind that subscription to
help us generate revenue so wecan keep building the service.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
So there's a lot behind RV Life Pro.
There's the apps that peopleare using, but really RV Life is
a content company or a mediacompany.
We've got the content sites andblogs and discussion forums and
podcasts.
Maybe, aside from the magazineat rvlifecom, can you paint a
(06:36):
picture for us of the RV Lifecontent network and how that's
evolving.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Yeah, so that's really where our roots started.
Um was in the forums, which isreally a user generated content
type of content.
Uh, then we got into blogs.
I bought do it yourself rvcomand when I bought that side I
got to meet your lovely wife,jim, who happened to be a writer
(07:01):
at do it yourself rvcom.
And so I got to meet Renee andthat was awesome and that was
the firstrvcom.
And so I got to meet Renee andthat was awesome and that was
the first blog I ever bought.
And so at that point we switchedfrom just running forums to
running forums and blogs.
And so now all of a sudden wehad editorial needs, which is
very different than likemoderating user-generated
content.
So we grew to like seven blogsthat we run now and In that time
(07:27):
it was really an ad-supportedbusiness.
You have forums and we put adson there, and you have blogs
that have ads on there.
Then it's with those funds thatwe pay to have articles written
or build a directory or buildtools.
For the RVing audience grew, rvLife Pro started to grow and
(07:49):
that started to change thebusiness model of our company.
So we were turning a little bitless of a media company and a
little bit more of a softwarecompany that has to manage the
software that we built the GPSturn-by-turn directions in your
phone and trip planning andstuff like that and so we had to
(08:11):
evolve from an ad-supportedmedia company over to a
subscription-based softwarecompany, and that has been
interesting, challenging andrewarding.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
And I keep thinking of community.
It's a big thing that keepscoming up on the RV Entrepreneur
Podcast and forums really are away to foster community.
I mean there's probably dozensof RV Life forums at this time.
I often tell people if you canthink of a forum or website
about RVing, rv Life probablyhas something to do with it.
But we're talking forums aboutspecific brands or travel
(08:47):
lifestyles.
So the community aspect howdoes that drive the you know the
software company or vice versa?
How is that supporting eachother there?
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Well, that's probably personally my favorite part.
So, since I have 25 years ofworking with forums and many of
the people on my team or peopleI've met on those specific
forums, we have a lot ofexperience running communities
and we took that and we appliedit over to the campground
(09:22):
reviews, photo submissions, youknow, and trying to take what we
learned in the communities andapply those same techniques into
other areas to try and grow thenumber of submissions.
And so if you look at thenumber of reviews submitted to
RV life versus a dirt or a roadtrippers kind of thing, you're
(09:44):
going to find significantly morenumber of reviews that are hot,
more detailed, have morenuances, specific for RVing, and
so for us, the community isreally everything, and you're
going to see in the next coupleof years that we're going to be
connecting all the dots.
So we grew in this kind ofcrazy way that allowed us, you
(10:04):
know, first was forums and weknew how to run forums.
Then was blogs.
We knew how to run blogs.
Then came software and westarted acquiring different
software and now we've got thishuge portfolio of things and
we're connecting them and sowe'll be taking all the
knowledge from our forums andall the knowledge from our blogs
and all the knowledge from ourcampground reviews and putting
(10:25):
that in AI, you know, and that'sgoing to be really fascinating
to see what we can come up withwhen it's trained with all that
information.
You know, and we're also doingthings throughout our software
that will be connecting thedifferent pieces.
So in the future you'll see ourapp right now is very I call it
very functional.
(10:45):
So it's it's for, it's for GPS,turn by turns and researching
campgrounds, but in the future Iwant it to be more social, more
community-oriented.
So almost think of our village.
Our village got shut down, butit was a good utility, it had a
lot of people, and so what we'rehoping to do is provide that
kind of social experience insideour app.
(11:06):
But on the other end, it'sreally connected to our forums
in the background, and so theforums in the background they're
active, they have moderators,they have, you know, we have
Winnebago owners moderating theWinnebago forums.
We have Airstream ownersmoderating the Airstream forums,
and that's been something thatwe've done since day one, you
know, to keep it authentic.
And so when we take those teamsand those websites and we then
(11:31):
bring them into a feed thatlooks differently, it'll look
more like social media and Ibelieve that we'll be able to
increase the engagementsignificantly, because there's
certain people that are foreignpeople and there's certain
people that are social networkpeople, and so we're trying
right now to find a way to mergeboth of those seamlessly so the
(11:52):
forum people enjoy thatinterface that they've always
had, but if you're into Facebookor Instagram, or maybe you were
on our village in the past andreally liked it, well, when you
get to our homepage, you'll beable to see a feed of all the
things that people are doing,things that people are doing.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
That is fascinating, and one of the things that you
mentioned almost didn't mentionis the podcast.
So, in addition to this, all ofthe content and the forums and
the communities and thegatherings that they hold,
there's the podcast.
So maybe we talk about the bigelephant in the room here.
There's the RV EntrepreneurPodcast that I've been doing for
two years now and the RV Lifepodcast, which is evolving, so
(12:31):
maybe we talk about theevolution and the future of what
people are listening to rightnow.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
Sure, sure, yeah, just like the rest of the stuff.
I think both podcasts came intoour network right at the same
month or two.
I had been friends with Heathover at RV Entrepreneur for
quite a few years and after hesold his campground booking
company to Good Sam, heapproached me about RVE,
(13:01):
basically saying, hey, I thinkwe'd like to sell this and we're
going to move on to some otherstuff, and so we acquired the RV
Entrepreneur podcast podcast,and it was literally that same
month.
I think that when I took theidea to patrick, who is one of
my colleagues, he said well,I've been working with somebody
else and we already have a rvlife podcast set up to start.
(13:23):
So what we did was we did bothand we're just testing to see
how it does, you know.
And so for the last couple ofyears we have had both of these
podcasts running in parallel,and what we've decided to do is
to try and to streamline ouroperation, and so we also have
one of the blogs we bought wasCamper Report, non-camper report
(13:45):
.
We have Bob and John who arereporters and do a YouTube show,
and what we're going to try anddo is take, as we tried, all
these different efforts, andnone of them are really huge
projects.
You know grand slams oranything like that, let's just
call them each base hits.
Well, we want to take each basehit, put them together and hope
we'll get a home run, you know,and so that's what we're going
(14:07):
to try and do here.
We're going to try and take theRVE podcast and the RV life
podcast, merge those into asingle podcast that we can then
focus on a little bit more andsee what happens.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
I see a grand slam in the works and I can't thank you
enough personally because I'mhonored to be on board to help
shape this direction, and I seethe RV Life podcast as
encompassing all things RVing,like RV Life, like the apps and
we will hope we will presentsegments with these industry
(14:42):
experts and voices that somepeople are aware of, like John
and Bob and Rose and Glenn,talking about industry and
travel and destinations andmaintenance, and roll it all
into that one content deliveryplatform for the podcast that
fits in with the apps and theforums and the blogs and I can't
wait to get involved and makethat come to fruition.
(15:05):
But listeners need to know thisis going to take a little bit
of time.
Meanwhile, the RV EntrepreneurPodcast.
Please go ahead and subscribeto that because while we may be
sunsetting it as a show, it willevolve as a segment on this RV
Life Podcast.
So definitely stay tuned forthat.
But, andy, I understand youmight have some other things in
the works at RV Life, sodefinitely stay tuned for that.
But, andy, I understand youmight have some other things in
the works at RV Life.
You're always juggling so manythings.
(15:26):
What's going on withmaintenance or other aspects of
RV Life that listeners might beready to hear about.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Yeah, maintenance is a really exciting one.
That one, Patrick, whopreviously was overseeing the RV
Life podcast with Patty andstuff.
He's been with us for gosh sixyears now or maybe even longer,
and he's been gracious enough tosort of take on any project we
threw at him.
(15:55):
And I think it was last year.
We found the need that weneeded more of what's called
product owners, and these arepeople it's kind of like a
product manager but it's aproduct owner, so you're kind of
owning and defining what you'regoing to build in the area that
you're in control of.
And Patrick graciously acceptedanother role which was to be the
(16:19):
product owner of themaintenance system.
And so previously we acquired asoftware called maintain my RV,
and maintain my RV was aplatform for RVers to keep logs
of their RV maintenance.
We then made that themaintenance component of RV life
.
The problem was it was writtenon a different software stack we
weren't able to upgrade.
(16:40):
It had some UI issues and stufflike that.
So we have now completelyrebuilt that um and that will be
coming out uh later this yearand that will allow our viewers
to track all their maintenanceand uh fuel logs um, ultimately,
in the long run, to each ofyour drives so you'll be able to
(17:02):
see you.
You know, like my ultimate goalthere is that you have a log of
all your drives and every drivehas all your tire pressure
monitoring info and all yourtransmission temperature info
and it's basically a dashboardof your entire drive and then we
can take that and crowdsourceit into some actionable
information to find out whenpeople have you know, if we know
that most F-250s are running ata certain temperature and
(17:25):
somebody's up running kind ofhigh compared to everybody else,
we can let them know.
You know, proactively kind ofthing.
And so there should be a lot ofreally neat stuff in the
maintenance area coming out andthat will start with the basics,
which is basically just addingyou know your rig and then, as
you do maintenance, you can addeach of those maintenance
records to it, and then we'll beworking to find a way to make
(17:49):
adding the maintenance recordsalmost seamless.
You know, basically imaginesending us your info.
We entered it for you, kind ofthing.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
So RV life really does make RVing simple.
And you mentioned kind of anevolution and a goal for the
future of there being this onekind of social feel app that has
everything integrated withpodcasts and all of this.
So is there anything you'rehiding?
What is like the ultimatevision?
(18:20):
Did I address that kind ofclosely?
Speaker 1 (18:23):
oh, definitely, definitely.
It's basically from the minutesomebody drives off the lot at
an rv dealership to the minutethey sell their rv.
We want to be there along theway to offer support, you know,
and have that community behindyou.
And so it's not just us as rvlife, but when I say we, that
means the rv life, the community.
So you got a question ask, youknow, um it, the, the
(18:45):
communities are really.
The forums are just specialplaces and, uh, but they're not
for everybody and so, um, youknow, I think that it's, I think
it's, you know, it's going tobe a lot of fun to watch.
I'm really excited.
In a couple of years, when welook back, I think we're going
to have connected a lot of thedots.
You know, if we bought up 30 or40 different RV websites and
(19:05):
services right now, they'restill functioning A lot of those
kind of individually and wejust constantly try to connect
more dots.
You know, and by connectingdots I'm talking about, you know
, making the system so if youopen the app while you're at a
campground, it knows you're atthe campground so it can check
you in automatically, and nowthat made check-ins easier,
(19:26):
right?
And so you just have to openthe app and it'll automatically
check you in.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
And I see it helping to build community because
within that app it may recognizeother forum members from you
know, either it's based on themodel of RV that you have or the
lifestyle choices that you makeand be just really connecting
it all together.
And I think pulling these twopodcasts together is a great
start industry and lifestyle andmaintenance and product reviews
(20:05):
and entrepreneur profiles ofpeople working on the road,
without having to describe to itto a bunch of different shows.
So, andy, I can't thank youenough, kind of pulling back the
curtain a bit and showing uswhat's going on at RV life, how
we began and where we're going.
Do you have anything else forthe listeners?
Speaker 1 (20:21):
No, just stay tuned.
We appreciate each and everyone of our listeners and we look
forward to, you know, keepevolving and keep trying.
And you know patience too,because not everything we try is
something that sticks for good,and so it's a constantly
evolving thing.
And you know, we justappreciate each and every member
(20:41):
we have.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
I'd like to reiterate that as well and encourage
people to get in touch with us.
You can go to therventrepreneurcom and, you know,
leave a voicemail message orleave a comment there or on
either of the shows.
Drop some comments, because wewant to know what you want to
hear and what you think aboutwhere we're headed and make sure
we're going on the right track.
So, andy, once again, thanksfor joining us.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
Thanks for having me, Jim.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
There you have it, folks.
You heard it here first.
I wish you knew what an honorand privilege it was to sit down
with Andy for that long andhave him share the history of RV
life and where we're headed.
There really is some excitingthings in the works, starting
(21:29):
with this podcast.
We really are grateful to haveyou along with us for the ride
and we hope you understand thiswill take some time as we refine
the format of the show to bestserve your RVing interests.
Speaking of which, please letus know what you think.
What do you want to hear?
Let us know on the RV LifePodcast Facebook page or at
podcastrvlifecom.
Together, we can help make thisshow better than ever before.
(21:53):
Please stay tuned.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
Are you ready to elevate your RVing adventures?
With RV Life Pro, you're notjust getting a service.
You're gaining a reliablecompanion for your journey, from
planning your trips withprecision to navigating with
confidence and even connectingwith a vibrant community of
fellow RV enthusiasts.
Rv Life Pro is your all-in-onesolution.
Don't just dream about theperfect adventure Live it.
(22:18):
Visit rvlifecom today anddiscover how RV Life can enhance
your RVing experience.
I'm really excited In a couple of years when we look
back, I think we're going tohave connected a lot of the dots
.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Hello RV Life listeners.
It is an honor to share withyou my conversation with RV Life
founder and CEO, andyRabinowitz.
But wait, who am I?
Where's Patty?
What's going on?
Don't panic, we have answersfor you.
I'm Jim at RV Life, and some ofyou maybe have heard my voice
(00:26):
on the RV Entrepreneur Podcast.
My co-host and I have beensharing stories and profiles of
some amazing people working fromthe road for a couple of years
now, since RV Life acquired theshow.
Meanwhile, patty has beenproviding incredible content for
this audience, and now the timehas come to merge our two
programs.
We can't thank Patty enough forher contributions and wish her
(00:49):
the best in her future endeavors, and we're very excited about
this evolution of the RV Lifepodcast.
You'll soon be hearing all aboutthe RV lifestyle, with industry
insight, travel tips and moreRV entrepreneur profiles.
This is going to take some time, so we hope you'll stay tuned
(01:10):
and keep subscribing to getnotified about upcoming episodes
with our new format.
But RV Life is much more than apodcast.
You may know about our TripWizard app, or maybe you
subscribe to the RV Lifemagazine blog, get link in show
notes.
But did you know that RV Lifehosts various content sites and
(01:30):
dozens of RVing discussionforums.
There's a huge community andmore exciting developments in
the works to fulfill our missionto make RVing simple.
Hear all about it right now inmy discussion with the man
behind the curtain at RV Life,andy Rabinowitz.
Andy, thank you so much fordoing this.
This is long overdue.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Well, thank you very much for having me.
I'm excited to be here today.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Oh, it's a pleasure, and listeners may not know our
voices and they might have heardme on the RV Entrepreneur.
I'm really excited to sharewhat's going on here, but it may
come as a surprise to somelisteners, so maybe you could
first give us a quickintroduction about yourself and
why you decided to do thisepisode with me today.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Sure sure.
So my name is Andy Rabinowitzand I'm the founder of RV Life.
I started the first websitethat became turned into what is
now RV Life about 20, 25 yearsago or so.
So it's been.
It's been a while and you knowwe've got a lot of over the time
.
We've had a lot of evolutionand stuff, and so you know,
(02:37):
getting to join the call todayand talk to you about that, it's
going to be fun and exciting.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
It is.
I'm excited about it and I wantto get into all that and this
is the RV Life podcast and Iknow we exist to make RVing
simple.
But what is RV Life?
What is RV Life?
Speaker 1 (02:57):
Well, RV Life is a platform for RVers that allows
them to simplify the RVownership experience, and so it
all started with forums a coupledecades back, and then it
evolved into a campgrounddirectory, which was called RV
Park Reviews, then CampgroundReviews and now called RV Life
(03:20):
Campgrounds, and we also have RVTrip Wizard that was brought
into the fold.
We acquired a tool calledMaintain my RV, the RV
Entrepreneur Podcast and variousother RV-based websites and
tools.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
So let's take a little step back here and give a
little history lessons.
Why RV life?
What inspired that and how didthat evolve?
You were in this discussionforums quite a bit and I think
you might have dabbled in someother niches, but what inspired
you to go forward with RV life?
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Well, yeah, originally the very first site
that I ever started was onAirstream trailers, and that's
kind of how it got going.
And then, after working withAirstream forums for many years,
I sort of became a forum expertand started to reach out to
(04:19):
other RV forum owners or in somecases, they would reach out to
me owners, or in some cases,they would reach out to me and
often it was a matter ofadopting a resource that wasn't
going to be able to stay onlineunless somebody was able to host
it for them.
And so, before you knew it, Ihad a handful of RV forums and
hanging out with RVers all day,every day, on the forums, and
(04:40):
then it was there that we justtry and listen to our members
and hear what they're doing andwhat their needs are, so we
could serve them.
And we actually tried to set upa campground directory on
Airstream forums and it workedokay, but the mindshare was too
small.
We needed more people tocontribute to have anything of
(05:02):
substance.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
So I want to get down deep into those forums a bit.
A lot of people don't realizehow many different forums RV
Life maintains or facilitates,but you mentioned RV Trip Wizard
and some people may be aware ofthat.
At the core, rv Life is a suiteof products.
We're making RVing simple andhelp people journey with
confidence.
Many people might be aware ofTrip Wizard, the trip planning
(05:26):
app but can you give us somekind of overview of what all
that RV Life Pro has to offer?
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Yeah, so RV Life Pro is a subscription service that
we have that provides some ofthe tools that folks are, you
know, help them get on the road.
So basically you can turn yourphone into an RV safe GPS, a
trip planning tool that accesses, you know, our deep catalog of
(05:52):
campground data and it also hasaccess to the maintenance
program and we have somemasterclasses and other things
that are part of thatsubscription service and it's
just certain features of RV Lifeare behind that subscription to
help us generate revenue so wecan keep building the service.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
So there's a lot behind RV Life Pro.
There's the apps that peopleare using, but really RV Life is
a content company or a mediacompany.
We've got the content sites andblogs and discussion forums and
podcasts.
Maybe, aside from the magazineat rvlifecom, can you paint a
(06:36):
picture for us of the RV Lifecontent network and how that's
evolving.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Yeah, so that's really where our roots started.
Um was in the forums, which isreally a user generated content
type of content.
Uh, then we got into blogs.
I bought do it yourself rvcomand when I bought that side I
got to meet your lovely wife,jim, who happened to be a writer
(07:01):
at do it yourself rvcom.
And so I got to meet Renee andthat was awesome and that was
the firstrvcom.
And so I got to meet Renee andthat was awesome and that was
the first blog I ever bought.
And so at that point we switchedfrom just running forums to
running forums and blogs.
And so now all of a sudden wehad editorial needs, which is
very different than likemoderating user-generated
content.
So we grew to like seven blogsthat we run now and In that time
(07:27):
it was really an ad-supportedbusiness.
You have forums and we put adson there, and you have blogs
that have ads on there.
Then it's with those funds thatwe pay to have articles written
or build a directory or buildtools.
For the RVing audience grew, rvLife Pro started to grow and
(07:49):
that started to change thebusiness model of our company.
So we were turning a little bitless of a media company and a
little bit more of a softwarecompany that has to manage the
software that we built the GPSturn-by-turn directions in your
phone and trip planning andstuff like that and so we had to
(08:11):
evolve from an ad-supportedmedia company over to a
subscription-based softwarecompany, and that has been
interesting, challenging andrewarding.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
And I keep thinking of community.
It's a big thing that keepscoming up on the RV Entrepreneur
Podcast and forums really are away to foster community.
I mean there's probably dozensof RV Life forums at this time.
I often tell people if you canthink of a forum or website
about RVing, rv Life probablyhas something to do with it.
But we're talking forums aboutspecific brands or travel
(08:47):
lifestyles.
So the community aspect howdoes that drive the you know the
software company or vice versa?
How is that supporting eachother there?
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Well, that's probably personally my favorite part.
So, since I have 25 years ofworking with forums and many of
the people on my team or peopleI've met on those specific
forums, we have a lot ofexperience running communities
and we took that and we appliedit over to the campground
(09:22):
reviews, photo submissions, youknow, and trying to take what we
learned in the communities andapply those same techniques into
other areas to try and grow thenumber of submissions.
And so if you look at thenumber of reviews submitted to
RV life versus a dirt or a roadtrippers kind of thing, you're
(09:44):
going to find significantly morenumber of reviews that are hot,
more detailed, have morenuances, specific for RVing, and
so for us, the community isreally everything, and you're
going to see in the next coupleof years that we're going to be
connecting all the dots.
So we grew in this kind ofcrazy way that allowed us, you
(10:04):
know, first was forums and weknew how to run forums.
Then was blogs.
We knew how to run blogs.
Then came software and westarted acquiring different
software and now we've got thishuge portfolio of things and
we're connecting them and sowe'll be taking all the
knowledge from our forums andall the knowledge from our blogs
and all the knowledge from ourcampground reviews and putting
(10:25):
that in AI, you know, and that'sgoing to be really fascinating
to see what we can come up withwhen it's trained with all that
information.
You know, and we're also doingthings throughout our software
that will be connecting thedifferent pieces.
So in the future you'll see ourapp right now is very I call it
very functional.
(10:45):
So it's it's for, it's for GPS,turn by turns and researching
campgrounds, but in the future Iwant it to be more social, more
community-oriented.
So almost think of our village.
Our village got shut down, butit was a good utility, it had a
lot of people, and so what we'rehoping to do is provide that
kind of social experience insideour app.
(11:06):
But on the other end, it'sreally connected to our forums
in the background, and so theforums in the background they're
active, they have moderators,they have, you know, we have
Winnebago owners moderating theWinnebago forums.
We have Airstream ownersmoderating the Airstream forums,
and that's been something thatwe've done since day one, you
know, to keep it authentic.
And so when we take those teamsand those websites and we then
(11:31):
bring them into a feed thatlooks differently, it'll look
more like social media and Ibelieve that we'll be able to
increase the engagementsignificantly, because there's
certain people that are foreignpeople and there's certain
people that are social networkpeople, and so we're trying
right now to find a way to mergeboth of those seamlessly so the
(11:52):
forum people enjoy thatinterface that they've always
had, but if you're into Facebookor Instagram, or maybe you were
on our village in the past andreally liked it, well, when you
get to our homepage, you'll beable to see a feed of all the
things that people are doing,things that people are doing.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
That is fascinating, and one of the things that you
mentioned almost didn't mentionis the podcast.
So, in addition to this, all ofthe content and the forums and
the communities and thegatherings that they hold,
there's the podcast.
So maybe we talk about the bigelephant in the room here.
There's the RV EntrepreneurPodcast that I've been doing for
two years now and the RV Lifepodcast, which is evolving, so
(12:31):
maybe we talk about theevolution and the future of what
people are listening to rightnow.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
Sure, sure, yeah, just like the rest of the stuff.
I think both podcasts came intoour network right at the same
month or two.
I had been friends with Heathover at RV Entrepreneur for
quite a few years and after hesold his campground booking
company to Good Sam, heapproached me about RVE,
(13:01):
basically saying, hey, I thinkwe'd like to sell this and we're
going to move on to some otherstuff, and so we acquired the RV
Entrepreneur podcast podcast,and it was literally that same
month.
I think that when I took theidea to patrick, who is one of
my colleagues, he said well,I've been working with somebody
else and we already have a rvlife podcast set up to start.
(13:23):
So what we did was we did bothand we're just testing to see
how it does, you know.
And so for the last couple ofyears we have had both of these
podcasts running in parallel,and what we've decided to do is
to try and to streamline ouroperation, and so we also have
one of the blogs we bought wasCamper Report, non-camper report
(13:45):
.
We have Bob and John who arereporters and do a YouTube show,
and what we're going to try anddo is take, as we tried, all
these different efforts, andnone of them are really huge
projects.
You know grand slams oranything like that, let's just
call them each base hits.
Well, we want to take each basehit, put them together and hope
we'll get a home run, you know,and so that's what we're going
(14:07):
to try and do here.
We're going to try and take theRVE podcast and the RV life
podcast, merge those into asingle podcast that we can then
focus on a little bit more andsee what happens.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
I see a grand slam in the works and I can't thank you
enough personally because I'mhonored to be on board to help
shape this direction, and I seethe RV Life podcast as
encompassing all things RVing,like RV Life, like the apps and
we will hope we will presentsegments with these industry
(14:42):
experts and voices that somepeople are aware of, like John
and Bob and Rose and Glenn,talking about industry and
travel and destinations andmaintenance, and roll it all
into that one content deliveryplatform for the podcast that
fits in with the apps and theforums and the blogs and I can't
wait to get involved and makethat come to fruition.
(15:05):
But listeners need to know thisis going to take a little bit
of time.
Meanwhile, the RV EntrepreneurPodcast.
Please go ahead and subscribeto that because while we may be
sunsetting it as a show, it willevolve as a segment on this RV
Life Podcast.
So definitely stay tuned forthat.
But, andy, I understand youmight have some other things in
the works at RV Life, sodefinitely stay tuned for that.
But, andy, I understand youmight have some other things in
the works at RV Life.
You're always juggling so manythings.
(15:26):
What's going on withmaintenance or other aspects of
RV Life that listeners might beready to hear about.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Yeah, maintenance is a really exciting one.
That one, Patrick, whopreviously was overseeing the RV
Life podcast with Patty andstuff.
He's been with us for gosh sixyears now or maybe even longer,
and he's been gracious enough tosort of take on any project we
threw at him.
(15:55):
And I think it was last year.
We found the need that weneeded more of what's called
product owners, and these arepeople it's kind of like a
product manager but it's aproduct owner, so you're kind of
owning and defining what you'regoing to build in the area that
you're in control of.
And Patrick graciously acceptedanother role which was to be the
(16:19):
product owner of themaintenance system.
And so previously we acquired asoftware called maintain my RV,
and maintain my RV was aplatform for RVers to keep logs
of their RV maintenance.
We then made that themaintenance component of RV life
.
The problem was it was writtenon a different software stack we
weren't able to upgrade.
(16:40):
It had some UI issues and stufflike that.
So we have now completelyrebuilt that um and that will be
coming out uh later this yearand that will allow our viewers
to track all their maintenanceand uh fuel logs um, ultimately,
in the long run, to each ofyour drives so you'll be able to
(17:02):
see you.
You know, like my ultimate goalthere is that you have a log of
all your drives and every drivehas all your tire pressure
monitoring info and all yourtransmission temperature info
and it's basically a dashboardof your entire drive and then we
can take that and crowdsourceit into some actionable
information to find out whenpeople have you know, if we know
that most F-250s are running ata certain temperature and
(17:25):
somebody's up running kind ofhigh compared to everybody else,
we can let them know.
You know, proactively kind ofthing.
And so there should be a lot ofreally neat stuff in the
maintenance area coming out andthat will start with the basics,
which is basically just addingyou know your rig and then, as
you do maintenance, you can addeach of those maintenance
records to it, and then we'll beworking to find a way to make
(17:49):
adding the maintenance recordsalmost seamless.
You know, basically imaginesending us your info.
We entered it for you, kind ofthing.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
So RV life really does make RVing simple.
And you mentioned kind of anevolution and a goal for the
future of there being this onekind of social feel app that has
everything integrated withpodcasts and all of this.
So is there anything you'rehiding?
What is like the ultimatevision?
(18:20):
Did I address that kind ofclosely?
Speaker 1 (18:23):
oh, definitely, definitely.
It's basically from the minutesomebody drives off the lot at
an rv dealership to the minutethey sell their rv.
We want to be there along theway to offer support, you know,
and have that community behindyou.
And so it's not just us as rvlife, but when I say we, that
means the rv life, the community.
So you got a question ask, youknow, um it, the, the
(18:45):
communities are really.
The forums are just specialplaces and, uh, but they're not
for everybody and so, um, youknow, I think that it's, I think
it's, you know, it's going tobe a lot of fun to watch.
I'm really excited.
In a couple of years, when welook back, I think we're going
to have connected a lot of thedots.
You know, if we bought up 30 or40 different RV websites and
(19:05):
services right now, they'restill functioning A lot of those
kind of individually and wejust constantly try to connect
more dots.
You know, and by connectingdots I'm talking about, you know
, making the system so if youopen the app while you're at a
campground, it knows you're atthe campground so it can check
you in automatically, and nowthat made check-ins easier,
(19:26):
right?
And so you just have to openthe app and it'll automatically
check you in.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
And I see it helping to build community because
within that app it may recognizeother forum members from you
know, either it's based on themodel of RV that you have or the
lifestyle choices that you makeand be just really connecting
it all together.
And I think pulling these twopodcasts together is a great
start industry and lifestyle andmaintenance and product reviews
(20:05):
and entrepreneur profiles ofpeople working on the road,
without having to describe to itto a bunch of different shows.
So, andy, I can't thank youenough, kind of pulling back the
curtain a bit and showing uswhat's going on at RV life, how
we began and where we're going.
Do you have anything else forthe listeners?
Speaker 1 (20:21):
No, just stay tuned.
We appreciate each and everyone of our listeners and we look
forward to, you know, keepevolving and keep trying.
And you know patience too,because not everything we try is
something that sticks for good,and so it's a constantly
evolving thing.
And you know, we justappreciate each and every member
(20:41):
we have.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
I'd like to reiterate that as well and encourage
people to get in touch with us.
You can go to therventrepreneurcom and, you know,
leave a voicemail message orleave a comment there or on
either of the shows.
Drop some comments, because wewant to know what you want to
hear and what you think aboutwhere we're headed and make sure
we're going on the right track.
So, andy, once again, thanksfor joining us.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
Thanks for having me, Jim.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
There you have it, folks.
You heard it here first.
I wish you knew what an honorand privilege it was to sit down
with Andy for that long andhave him share the history of RV
life and where we're headed.
There really is some excitingthings in the works, starting
(21:29):
with this podcast.
We really are grateful to haveyou along with us for the ride
and we hope you understand thiswill take some time as we refine
the format of the show to bestserve your RVing interests.
Speaking of which, please letus know what you think.
What do you want to hear?
Let us know on the RV LifePodcast Facebook page or at
podcastrvlifecom.
Together, we can help make thisshow better than ever before.
(21:53):
Please stay tuned.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
Are you ready to elevate your RVing adventures?
With RV Life Pro, you're notjust getting a service.
You're gaining a reliablecompanion for your journey, from
planning your trips withprecision to navigating with
confidence and even connectingwith a vibrant community of
fellow RV enthusiasts.
Rv Life Pro is your all-in-onesolution.
Don't just dream about theperfect adventure Live it.
(22:18):
Visit rvlifecom today anddiscover how RV Life can enhance
your RVing experience.
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