RV Shenanigans! Podcast from Millers in Motion
The RV Shenanigans podcast is your go-to audio adventure for all things RV travel! Hosted by Ryan & Lauren Miller of Millers in Motion, this podcast dives into the ups, downs, and downright hilarious moments of life on the road. From navigating epic road trips and campsite mishaps to discussing RV gear, maintenance tips, and travel inspiration, RV Shenanigans brings a mix of expert advice and laugh-out-loud stories. Whether you’re a seasoned RVer or just dreaming of hitting the road, this podcast delivers relatable tales, helpful tips, and plenty of good vibes to fuel your wanderlust. Tune in, buckle up, and get ready to keep the wheels rolling and the adventures coming!
RV Shenanigans! Podcast from Millers in Motion
Hilarious RV Misadventures and Community Wisdom: Recorded LIVE at the United Rally
This podcast episode engages with RV enthusiasts as they share quirky repair stories, the odd tools they've used, and how mishaps strengthen community bonds. The importance of work-life balance, bucket list destinations, and the role of checklists in ensuring smooth travels are discussed.
• Unique stories about unconventional RV repair tools
• The value of community support during challenges
• Sharing memorable experiences while RVing
• Balancing work and vacation in a travel-centric lifestyle
• Discussing bucket list destinations for RV travel
• Importance of checklists in RV preparation
Welcome back to the RV Shenanigans podcast. My name is Ryan and, along with my wife, lauren, we are Millers in Motion from YouTube. This podcast has been so much fun to record and yet again, we got to do another one of our favorite slash bucket list things and that is talk with a bunch of channels. So this is a live recording of the second YouTube panel from the 2025 United Rally. I hosted both of these panels. Now this panel I'm actually on, so you get some fun stories about us in this one. But on this panel with us was RV Blogger our good friends Mike and Susan, the Bimble Effect season, two winners of RV Unplugged Millers in Motion. You may know them no Sticks, no Bricks, our Road Less Traveled. Brazen Brits, and switch it up again. Please enjoy this panel from the United Rally. All right, welcome to the second YouTuber panel.
Speaker 1:It's going to be similar to yesterday, with a little bit of some slight different topics. This is a Q&A, so if you guys have questions, I actually have the wireless mic in my hand. So if you have a question, just raise your hand. It can be during while they're talking and I'll come over to you, but we want this to be as interactive as possible. And as far as questions go, they will literally answer anything if I tell them to right Especially, and as far as questions go, they will literally answer anything if I tell them to right Especially, jack. Jack's an open book. I know that's why he's an open book. You can't really hear him. We're going to have to turn the mic up for him. So, with that being said, I'm going to do the icebreaker. So if you have a question, just raise your hand.
Speaker 1:When we get to the second half of this, it's straight all you guys. So be thinking of your questions. Okay. So I have a very random question about kind of RV things that you guys have experienced and maybe had to fix on your rigs. What's the weirdest or oddest tool you've had to use to fix something on your RV? And I say that it doesn't have to be an actual. This is a wrench. Sticks can be tools. Come on, there's got to be something. Yeah, break the ice, todd.
Speaker 4:Bueller, bueller if you get that.
Speaker 4:That's a great movie. They all are old enough. Yeah, yeah, that's nice. Ferris Bueller's Day Off, yes, so odd thing, we get no, no Stop with single and movie quotes, soundtracks, movie soundtracks for single. Okay, we digress Back to the question. Back to the question.
Speaker 4:When we first got this RV we didn't know how to hook up to it, this new one. And we hooked up and we started down the road for the first day and when I got to where we were supposed to, we needed to unhook and I I went to go there's this like latch, you know, you gotta pull. Well, there's this much room and I put my little arms in there and I had like t-rex arms to try to reach and I couldn't reach it. And then I couldn't pull it and I go, I don't know how to unhook. And she's like, well, what are we gonna do? And so I ended up odd tool, when we lost our tire going down the highway. I ended up getting one of those long, not breaker bars. But yeah, what is the tension thing? What is it? Torque wrench? Thank you, the torque wrench thing. And I was like, yes, so I busted that out, found the longest socket I could to reach in and then I used that to unhitch from the RV, so that became our hitch puller for a while.
Speaker 1:It's a really expensive little grabber. Thing.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah for a grabber thing.
Speaker 1:Could have gotten one on Amazon for like five bucks.
Speaker 4:What I use now is a trucker puller thing Bob. Trucker puller thing Bob. Yeah, that's right, you can find it on Amazon.
Speaker 5:Just put a trucker puller thing.
Speaker 4:Yeah just put trucker, puller thing thing on, just put trucker puller thing.
Speaker 1:Anybody else got an odd tool, a hair dryer. So you left your hose out when it froze, didn't you?
Speaker 6:No, you would think that how many of y'all religiously sweep the inside of your rig before you leave? Who can tell me why you sweep that rig before you pull your slides in? It will tear your floor Twice. So if you're interested in how to fix a tear in a vinyl floor, I am now an expert at it. We had to use a hair dryer to heat up the linoleum enough to get it pliable so that I could get it glued back down to the floor.
Speaker 1:Okay, I could have used you in our other rig.
Speaker 6:All you need is wax paper, a weight, a hair dryer and wood glue.
Speaker 1:So after this there's going to be Clay's Fixing Vinyl Floor Seminar over on the corner there. Anybody else got one?
Speaker 8:I do. Some of you might know, but for those that don't, I'm a retired mechanic and so when we upgraded to lithium batteries, naturally I would use zip ties to secure these batteries to the RV, because the holders that were on the old batteries weren't going to work with the new batteries. So my buddy John, over here with the Cottywample Travels. There he is right in front of us, we use zip ties, and then I did a video on it and in the video, of course, I said this is a temporary solution, for now we're going to just secure them with zip ties, but to be honest, they're going to be here for the remainder of the time they're in the RV. So they work.
Speaker 1:Zip ties are our best friend, mike.
Speaker 9:I have two unique tools that we use. We have two RVs. One of them we leave at home all the time and our kids primarily use that RV, so it sits in our driveway most of the year and then they take it out a few weeks a year. But since it sits there, we had a bee's nest in our vent pipe. So when the kids would go to drain the black water tank, it was not draining all the way because, you know, the thumb wasn't lifted off the straw, as they say, and so the tank wouldn't drain. So I ended up using a garden hose, shoving it down through the vent pipe on the roof and cleared all of that bees nest out of there.
Speaker 9:That was a whole lot of fun. So that's one thing. So if you do leave your rv in storage quite a bit, that is one thing that could happen to you. So I thought I'd bring that up. The other thing that happened is we had a stink bug nest in uh, the freshwater tank um vent valve for that. So when the kids would try to get a garden hose to fill the water tank, the water was coming back out where you would put your garden hose in, because the little vent pipe was filled with a stink bug nest, so we used a coat hanger to clean that thing out and then everything worked correctly. But if your rig's in storage quite a bit, those might be a couple things that happen to you.
Speaker 10:So I'm gonna change, or I was just gonna say for us if anything goes wrong, jack just tells me to go get the duct tape. That's it, yeah or towels or towels.
Speaker 1:That happens a lot too, you know so I'm gonna change the question just a little bit for one of our panelists, assuming he can get a mic. So you guys are in the process of building something. What's the weirdest tool you've had to use so far to actually construct something in your new RV or new van or new, whatever we're calling it now Britmobile.
Speaker 7:Can I just say if anyone says to you hey, can you go to the tiki bar tonight, come and have a drink, can you just politely decline and go to bed early?
Speaker 1:I Can you just politely decline and go to bed early. I will say I'm appreciative because now this is happening, which is just magic for everybody else. I can second that Apparently, I had a great time.
Speaker 12:I can second that with this voice.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's his real voice at the moment.
Speaker 12:The karaoke at the Tiki Bar is dangerous.
Speaker 5:Actually, I think it's just an exercise in self-control.
Speaker 1:Where are the keys? By the way, are you in here, mom? Thank you for ruining half of my panel.
Speaker 7:I don't do exercise or self-control. The weirdest tool, Natalie, what do you think? A fishing?
Speaker 5:magnet.
Speaker 7:We do have a fishing magnet. Does anyone know what a fishing magnet is? Yes, I wanted my one.
Speaker 7:They're great, they're good fun, especially when you're a. It's basically a really strong magnet on a rope, and so when we go kayaking we obviously live in Crystal River, we have a home base there, so we kayak a lot you can find all kinds of things Phones, sunglasses and you just drag the fishing magnet behind and then and then after a few minutes you pull it up and you get oh sorry, I thought you meant how does it?
Speaker 10:work.
Speaker 7:Yeah, that got so yeah, we did use that to run some wires, which was not as good as its men to be. Like, if you're in a house with drywall you can use the magnet to run the wires down, but down the back of the drywall. But it doesn't work so well on a metal transit van, but we tried it. There was problems but it worked. We made it work. But I think that's probably the weirdest thing. Apart from that, things like everyone else has said, like zip ties, duct tape, hammers, hammer's a weird tool speaker wire it sounds like we could be arrested with all of it.
Speaker 1:Lawrence, is there a bag of lime in the back of your van? Just asking.
Speaker 8:And all that's just to control the stink bug population.
Speaker 7:Yeah, I think the only other thing is speaker wire. Don't ever underestimate speaker wire. You can use that for so many things Electrical stuff, tying stuff up.
Speaker 9:Hello, I'm Chris Hansen.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'll let you off the hook with tying Natalie up.
Speaker 7:Thanks, she just said stop.
Speaker 1:Is that?
Speaker 7:the. It's not like avocado.
Speaker 1:That's the safe word. Just stop Sorry.
Speaker 7:It's normally get off me. All right, I'm in trouble now.
Speaker 4:Line. There's a line.
Speaker 1:There's never a line, todd, I'm so happy I'm recording this, okay, so on that same topic, and you don't have to say the actual dollar amount In fact I would encourage you not to but what's the most expensive repair? Not buying in, you don't count for the minute, unless it's on the old rig. Then you count again, but what's the most expensive repair you've had to do? But I'm going to have a caveat Self-inflicted Marriage counseling. You know you got a good question, whole crowd goes ABS sensors.
Speaker 9:Thousand dollars driving over the Rocky Mountains, laying on the brakes too much. I learned how to drive on that trip, but that was a thousand dollar.
Speaker 1:Learning Downshifting's a thing yeah.
Speaker 14:All right, I have ours. You better run and hide. All right, when our Solitude was for sale, we had moved it to a different location because we already had our Valor. And when we were moving it there were, let's say, obstacles in the way and it was very tight, and this was a 42-foot rig.
Speaker 1:It was a tree there, a 42 foot rig.
Speaker 14:It was a tree. There's your hint. It was a tree. There were lots of trees, so my job was to see the branches up top, so we didn't rip off the solar panels and all those things, right.
Speaker 1:So I'm watching all don't look at me like that I'm watching all the branches up top.
Speaker 14:We didn't see the one that went out and we wrapped around it.
Speaker 1:Hang on, hang on, hang on, we, yeah, we. It was my blind side.
Speaker 14:I couldn't, neither of us, neither of us and a tree branch right through the fiberglass in the side of the solitude while it's for sale.
Speaker 1:That was an expensive fiberglass repair that was an expensive.
Speaker 14:We did it right.
Speaker 1:We have an amazing place in Texas if you need it now, by the way, if you need fiberglass repair. Yeah, that one was rough, it was Todd. I feel like you've done something, especially the old rig.
Speaker 4:No, in four years we just did our biggest damage we've ever done Three days ago. I call it an attack, a spiritual attack, because it always happens in a huddle. Moving from the front to back here which is what An eighth of a mile I backed up because there was a ditch like this and I thought I backed up enough to take the ditch at an angle. If you look at the back of the truck, the truck went down the ditch and up. I pushed the LED wall into the rig, busted one of the top panels, which is about $1,800 a panel.
Speaker 1:Is that why there's a little green line up there?
Speaker 4:that was driving me nuts when we were over there Now there's a big back of the back of the thing on the truck. Then we proceeded to bottom out on the back side, rip the back door open, break the thing and scratch all the paint on the bottom. So I'd say it's five to eight grand somewhere in there.
Speaker 1:Please buy Switch it Up merch.
Speaker 4:We are singing tonight. Baby, I am going to sing with the loudest voice, but yeah, that was a challenge that one hurt a little.
Speaker 5:The tiki bar is after.
Speaker 8:So what do you have one? I do so. A couple years ago this is when we had the F-450 and the Momentum we were at Chesapeake Bay, thousand Trails in Virginia and we got the Momentum know Momentum parked. I parked the truck next to it and we also had a Subaru Crosstrek at the time that we used to tool around. So the truck just sat. So I get out of the truck, park it. Look at a pole. I said remember that pole in two weeks when we leave. Oh boy, two weeks goes by. Get in the truck, pull out, forget about the pole, smash the entire door in, hit the pole. And it would have been an expensive fix. But I just got on Amazon and ordered a $7 Wile E Coyote sticker and I just stuck it on the door. It was done. That's a good one. I'm going to use that one on the back of the truck.
Speaker 8:Funny story about the Wile E Coyote sticker I actually got. I was in Arizona and pulled into a gas station and all of a sudden this sheriff comes whipping in next to me with his lights on. I'm like, oh crap, what did I do? I did something wrong. He pulls up, gets out of his car, comes over to me goes. I just want to check out your Wile E.
Speaker 13:Coyote sticker.
Speaker 1:Alright Lawrence, do you want to tell the transmission story now, Because I figured that's where you're going.
Speaker 7:No, that wasn't self-inflicted.
Speaker 12:I've seen you drive man.
Speaker 7:It could have been so the van that we've been staying in. We took it in yesterday morning, I can't remember. I don't know what happened after last night, brian. So we had to be there early because our friend Chad and Sabrina I don't think they're here, I think they're working but Sabrina said I can take you to the shop and bring you back. It's got to be early before I start work. I'm not a morning person, so we get up about six o'clock, we get all the van ready, I, you know. We get all of our stuff ready, packed up, and I start the engine and I say to natalie right, are we good to go? Luckily I remembered I hadn't even unplugged from the pedestal, I just walked from the bed to the front of the van and at the last second I had it in gear and I remembered. So that could have been very dangerous. But yeah, that's uh. The transmission story is still going on. We're waiting for a phone call. But uh, yeah, that's uh. Super cheap, right, super cheap, super cheap.
Speaker 12:So yeah, I don't think my voice will do it, so shel Shelby's going to try.
Speaker 10:I'll try. One of our most expensive things is every single time my husband tries to get out of our driveway. I knew it.
Speaker 12:I knew it, I knew it he runs into the lake. No stop, stop. So a lot of these stories are on the road right. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're requesting, shelby. We can't take your voice, man.
Speaker 10:A lot of these happen shelby here you go on the road. So, like I said, every time we try to get off our property, whether it was the 80 acres or the new which is right next door he has a problem getting off the property. We don't even get.
Speaker 10:So jack, I've muted you, mike, not a chance I know we've tried to come out of our property currently and he's ripped off the whole sewage hose, um you know, and the leg we almost tipped over and in our case, we used an american flag sticker to cover ours up instead of repairing one part of it too.
Speaker 12:So, so, that happened because because I I tried to use a, a tractor to pull it.
Speaker 10:Oh, he just can't take it that he needs driving lessons, so if anybody here can teach my husband how to drive Turn wide, turn wide.
Speaker 12:Yeah, so we can't even get off our own property. Self-inflicted Me again. We had sewage hanging down underneath. I don't drive, he does. The hydraulic leg is ripped off Maybe I should drive and I'm halfway in the street off our property and it's all dangling. I go gosh now what the hell just happened. It was terrible. So this all happens on the road, but not for us, right in our driveway.
Speaker 10:Yep right in our driveway.
Speaker 1:So that brings up a point what's the most awkward place? You've had a problem that's caused you to actually stop physically traveling, so driveway seems to be one.
Speaker 10:On our own property. That's awkward. I got a driveway one.
Speaker 8:so before the momentum we had a 40 foot raptor toy hauler and a ram, dually, and I had switched to the 450 platinum, which was fancy compared to my ram. It had electronic tailgate. You know, you push the button and the tailgate drops down. Super fancy, unless you put the keys in your hoodie pocket and then put your seatbelt over the top and while I'm towing my new, driving my new truck, towing my old camper down and I take the curve on our driveway, I must have hit that button and the tailgate went Boop, oh gosh. So guess what happened. When I take the turn, I hear crunch. I look back and both doors are just smashed in. And we're living in Alaska at the time and I can't get the doors in Alaska. So I order the doors and they cost a fraction of what it cost to ship them up to Alaska. It was an expensive fix.
Speaker 14:Anybody else, ours was probably on the road to Florida when we took a lug nut off of a semi into our front cap, and so we had to pull over and try to fix it. But the other part is that we were outrunning a storm system the same storm that dumped tornadoes throughout the whole area and so we were trying to beat the rain, and now we have a hole in the front cap.
Speaker 14:It looked like a .50 caliber went through our front cap. It was as big as my hand and I have a picture of that one, but yeah, so we had to fill it at a rest stop on the phone with alliance trying to figure out what to do, because we can see the clouds like moving in. It is about to rain and if we don't put something in it it would have ruined it essentially, I just wanted to know if I squeeze a full tube of sealant in this thing yeah is it going to do something that causes them to not be able to repair?
Speaker 1:it is my actual concern. At that point, what are you going to do? Put tape over it?
Speaker 8:I would recommend a Wile E Coyote sticker. Are those waterproof we?
Speaker 1:didn't have one, but we'll order them to have them on hand and that was terrifying, by the way, because I say that it sounded like a 12 gauge shotgun went off above our head about 4 feet. And it's like that 12-gauge shotgun went off above our head about four feet and it's like that slow-mo thing. Anybody ever hit one of those really big bugs and you can see them from like a quarter mile away and it splats. Except this I watched it sheer off of a truck and bounce right in front and hit, and I'm just thankful it didn't come through our windshield, because otherwise one of us wouldn't be here. Probably both of us have hit me because. So, yeah, that one was not fun, by the way, it was so bad they had to completely replace the front cap. It was spiderwebs, so bad.
Speaker 1:All right, anybody else now that my stories are getting out there. So I will say I am coming to somebody soon and if you don't have a question, you're going to come up with one on the spot. So if you have a question, raise your hand, I'm going to come, wander by. It's going to be you. So what's the most awkward thing that you've had to film for YouTube? Whether it made a video or not, I don't care, but you've actually filmed it.
Speaker 4:That happened around, maybe an incident in your RV.
Speaker 5:And I don't know why I'm staring right at Todd, but I just figured there's something. I think the most traumatic thing and you could watch the videos when we lost the tire.
Speaker 4:Yeah, sheila filmed it because she wanted to capture the moment, but she also filmed her breaking point, like it was at that point. It was like she, we had had so many things go wrong up to that point and now we've been on the road for like three years and it just you could see. So she I commend her for picking and being transparent in that moment when I was trying to be uplifting and we're going to get through this and stuff, but not to be a Debbie Downer but that was like a breaking point. A lot of times we have youtube channels and we sometimes elect to share that and that was that was our moment yeah you're not gonna cry now, are you?
Speaker 5:I mean you're there's many times that I will pull the camera out and todd will just look at me and be like not now, right, does anybody else get the? Not now, like okay, and like okay. But then, looking back in hindsight, he's like oh, that, probably we could have, that probably would have helped somebody else out, right? So there's moments where you try to balance out our personal sanity and yet being able to help somebody else and but that tire moment I was like, okay, we were in the middle of working, trying to figure out how we were going to build that and so just that, at compounded stress and pressure on, you know the normal YouTube life as itself. Then your wheel just goes rolling down the road. Thank goodness we were in nowhere, north Dakota, because nobody was on the road, so it was good. But that was a tough one, because nobody was on the road, so it was good, but that was a tough one.
Speaker 10:Well, for us, it was our first video that we put out, when we had just gotten the RV. It was our first trip. It was something I've wanted my whole entire life. And Jack didn't make the corner and we almost lost it and it was going to fall on our property into the creek and it was so emotional for me. I was just so distraught and on the video I was like praying to jesus, god, everybody.
Speaker 10:I was praying to everybody. There's a jesus category. Yeah, as a counter, how many times I said please god, please god, please god and it. Well, we got a lot of comments too. People like I know you guys get this back too. But we got a lot of bad comments about me saying praying to god too. But that's a whole nother story. But that was really traumatic and I started calling everybody in the world. Where we live in Tennessee and we are so blessed with our neighbors Our salesman that sold us the RV came to help, our neighbors with tractors came to help. Everybody came and pulled together in our community and I'm going to start crying thinking about it. But that was really really tough. But with all the help from all of our friends in the community, we were able to get it out film it.
Speaker 12:Okay, I'm gonna try. So shelby filmed this, but we did not have a channel. No, we did. We didn't do this for a channel, she was just filming it for us to show our kids. We didn't turn that into a video for a year, right, more than that Our first video ever. So that's our first video and for our first video, I'm gonna let you know people, like if you did something wrong. We got like 150,000 views on our first video because I messed up so bad and it was leaning into the creek and then the rain came and Shelby's filming the whole thing and I'm on a 50-year-old tractor trying to pull the thing out and that was dumb. So, yeah, that's our filming story. That we didn't even know was going to be a video. So it worked out okay.
Speaker 4:It worked out great because that's how I became a subscriber to their channel. I found that video and I like to say I saw you guys when you very first started. I followed your whole journey. So not Sheila so much, but she then caught up to me when she started watching.
Speaker 5:I'm just thankful I have new friends now.
Speaker 1:So, that's how you got us.
Speaker 8:Anybody else got one Of course, this just actually happened a couple months ago. So now we're in our new RV, our Fleetwood, our motorhome, and we're towing the Jeep behind us, and then on the Jeep is our bike rack for the e-bikes and we just got the RV. So the dogs they're kind of nervous wrecks right now. They haven't quite figured out this whole motor thing or motorhome thing. And so our yellow lab axle we're kind of experimenting with some calming medication for him to help him on travel days. So we're going down the road, we're on I-1010 and there's trucker pulls up next to us and he keeps doing. He's doing this like he's doing a throttle and we're trying. I'm like what is this guy?
Speaker 8:doing? What's he trying to tell me he's throttling. And then it dawns on me bike. He's doing something with the bike. I'm like uh-oh, what's going on with the bike? So we pull over into a loves. I get out and jennifer's bike is on the road and half the handlebar is gone.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that happened to us too. It's that same thing.
Speaker 8:So I walk out of the RV with the camera because I'm like, well, this guy is telling me something, let's see what the surprise is, right. So I walk out with the camera and Jennifer is walking towards me and I was like did you see your bike? And she goes did you see the dog shit all over the couch? What I didn't know. We're not using that calming medicine anymore for Axel. And then we gave away the e-bikes.
Speaker 4:Just remember that if you look to buy their used RV in the future.
Speaker 1:Anybody else got one.
Speaker 4:Oh, you got a new one. Oh, send a new one. Oh, it had a blanket.
Speaker 6:It used to have a white couch. It's gray now. It used to have a white couch.
Speaker 1:It's gray now, anybody else?
Speaker 6:I've got a really good one. It makes us kind of seem stupid. How many of y'all have seen that movie where there's an 18-wheeler going down a highway and the driver of it kidnaps the wife? It's got Kurt Russell in it. Y'all seen that?
Speaker 6:Marie and I had watched that movie, I guess, a couple weeks before we took off and we were headed north on I-65. We were almost into Tennessee and I had been jockeying with this 18-wheeler for 20 miles. Every time I would go around him and put some distance between us, he would catch right back up to us and he would pass me. So I figured, you know, we've got the ram, I'll just stand on it a little bit. I hammered down on it, got away from him. Maria's over here. You know what's the guy's problem? Did you piss him off? Did you cut him off? I, maria, is over here. What's the guy's problem? Did you piss him off? Did you cut him off? I'm like I didn't do anything to him.
Speaker 6:So this goes on. For what? 50, 60 miles? It's a while.
Speaker 6:And he finally caught us again, passed us, got in front of me, and every time he would slow down so that we would have to go back around him. And the last time we went around him there's a sign in his window and it says we follow you and I was like he's trying to steal us. So I wrapped that ram up to about 2,400 RPM and I mean we're getting it. And Maria's like you have got to slow down, we're going to blow a tire. So I think we get far enough away and a guy catches us again and I have to go around him and I told Maria we're just going to get off at the next exit.
Speaker 6:I mean I don't know what to do at this point. I really think this guy is chasing us, trying to kidnap us. So we go around him again and it dawns on me it's YouTube. He follows us on YouTube, not anymore. No, he's not following us across the country to steal us. So we made a short video and posted it and we ended up getting in touch with him and his wife had a big laugh over it.
Speaker 4:That's fabulous.
Speaker 1:Anybody else? All right. We have an audience question, and this is the time of the show where the panelists normally are wondering where I went and that Sheila was scanning a little bit ago.
Speaker 14:Hi my name is Judy and yesterday we got some great ideas from the panel about their bucket list destinations and I was jotting them down so we can add it to our bucket list. So what are your bucket list destinations?
Speaker 1:Don't everybody answer it once.
Speaker 10:Mine's Alaska. I know a lot of you guys have been to Alaska and we would love to hear all about it. I know Chris and Katrina just did a bunch of videos on that, but that is ours. We have not been there yet, I know. You guys do I know, nobody else do I know.
Speaker 1:Nobody else has a bucket. Oh, thank you, clay, I like a good nap.
Speaker 6:I know Alaska's on our list.
Speaker 13:Probably Canada too.
Speaker 6:Yeah, we want to.
Speaker 1:I hope Canada's on your list, if Alaska is because you kind of don't have a choice.
Speaker 6:She wants to go from one side to the other.
Speaker 13:No, I want to see the northeast in the fall, like Canada up in New England.
Speaker 6:So every year that we have been on the road. For those of y'all that don't know, maria is one of the most amazing photographers in North America and she has always wanted to go to the northeast to do it's called leaf peeping. Y'all that don't know Maria is one of the most amazing photographers in North America and she has always wanted to go to the northeast to do it's called leaf peeping keep it clean clay and every year when we're planning on going to do that, something happens and we get drugged somewhere else.
Speaker 6:so we would really like to start on one end of Canada, go all the way to the other and then come back through Maine for leaf peeping season.
Speaker 7:Okay, I think for us there's so many places that we haven't done Because we learned pretty early on. We thought the further we drove, the better we were doing at RVing, which isn't true, because you miss everything out in the middle. So now we take it really slow. We haven't done Badlands, we haven't done Badlands, we haven't done Banff, we haven't done all the national parks. So we still have all of these amazing places that I'm sure everyone here has already been to.
Speaker 7:But there's one thing I watch, a channel called Destination Adventure and I was talking to someone about this yesterday and he goes, this guy he's got a truck camper and he tows a little boat and he goes to some of the remote places in Canada and obviously we won't be doing that in our van. Well, we're not going anywhere in our van right now, but you definitely won't be doing it in a Class A. You would need a truck camper. But some of the places he goes and sees, he finds the weirdest places, like mining places and old war places which I didn't even know existed. But for me, I think my bucket place is those really weird remote places that no one else has ever really been to. So yeah, I think that's it for me.
Speaker 1:So, just everywhere remote, everywhere remote, perfect Correct, lauren, I'm going to put you on the spot.
Speaker 14:You know, I kind of second what he said, that there's so much we haven't seen that it's hard to have just one thing on the bucket list. But ultimately the one thing you know is on my bucket list is Hawaii and no, we're not taking the RV.
Speaker 1:I guess non-RV answers are an option as well.
Speaker 14:What about you?
Speaker 1:Hawaii.
Speaker 14:Because we talk Cheater.
Speaker 1:Happy wife happy life.
Speaker 12:I had a question, I'm going to try has anybody RV'd overseas? You've done that, so you flew there and rented.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and where'd you go? Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.
Speaker 8:France and Switzerland.
Speaker 12:Was it difficult to navigate everything.
Speaker 15:No, well, last summer we went to France and Switzerland and we rented a van a Class C and we drove all around France four weeks in France and three weeks in Switzerland. That's amazing and it was very easy. Google Maps is your friend. It works everywhere, and one of the cool things about especially France is the fact that the roads are really made for RVing. You can stop pretty much anywhere. What they call airs is like a rest area where you can just pull in. I mean, you've got gas stations, food, restaurants. It was just amazing. I mean, it was really one of a. It was a bucket list for sure.
Speaker 12:So that's what we want to do. When our kids were young, we took them in a van five kids all through Europe like European vacation in a van, not an RV, and we had to stay. It was a minivan.
Speaker 10:It was a minivan.
Speaker 12:So we had to stay at like Marriott's and stuff. And now Shelby and I want to go and just go overseas to different places, not in our rig, but to rent one like you did. So that's a bucket list.
Speaker 10:at some point, we would love to hear more about it and the process. Thank you for sharing Sorry.
Speaker 8:Good Mine's to hear more about it and the process. Thank you for sharing. Sorry, good mine's not quite as extravagant, but I definitely want to go to zion national park and hike angels landing. Yes, that's the one where you're like climbing the ropes and yeah. So I think we're going to do that this fall. I don't know if jen's going to join me for the whole hike, but, uh, I definitely want to do that. Sheila Angel's Landing we're in, we'll go.
Speaker 10:We'll go with you.
Speaker 4:I'm not in. If you watch our channel, I'll wait at the bottom.
Speaker 10:We love inviting ourselves to go places with other people, even though if you didn't invite us, we just invited ourselves.
Speaker 8:You have a blanket invitation All right awesome.
Speaker 1:Both of them, or just asking Shelby and Jack.
Speaker 10:Oh, you're so nice.
Speaker 1:Thank you, jack, you're in, I made it, mike. Susan, do you guys have a bucket list?
Speaker 9:Yeah, for us, I guess it would be visiting the big five national parks in Utah. We've scheduled to go there twice and had to cancel both times, so there's a part of me that thinks maybe we're not supposed to go there, but we do want to get there someday.
Speaker 1:Does anybody else have a question behind me? Nope, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.
Speaker 3:I want to ask the whole panel I want to see a show of hands how many of you have a checklist and use it on a regular basis? We're going to elaborate on this.
Speaker 1:Nope, keep going. What's the checklist? How do you do what version of a checklist? There's a lot of different options here.
Speaker 13:Well, since we got the new rig rig, I had to do a checklist for just everything. Yes, because it's very different, but most importantly it's it's more like turning our uni off and the Jeep. We forgot to do that a couple times. The next thing, you know, we're getting built twice once for the RV, which is already towing the Jeep, and then the Jeep by itself. Solists are a must. Plus, we have to drain the toilets, because if you don't, well, we all know what could happen there.
Speaker 1:So has anybody? Oh, go ahead, Lawrence.
Speaker 7:We don't use a checklist, and we really should. But we kind of have a different type of checklist and I use paper plates and I put them on the dash to remind me of all the stupid things, Like now, after the other day, the next one is going to be unplugged from the pedestal and we also have a ring camera that we stick on the side of the rig, and so I have a paper plate ring camera. So I guess we're like a really crappy version of a checklist with just paper plates. At some point we'll get professional and maybe print it out, Basically post it.
Speaker 1:There's different ways of doing checklists. As long as you do it, has anybody just say they have a checklist and maybe don't actually use it anymore.
Speaker 5:We had a checklist when we started right Like when I first started for probably the first year. It was on my phone. I just checked those things through, but now I don't use it. It's like I just start at the front of the rig and work my way back and I know what I need to do as I enter each room. Maybe I'll get to the point where I need paper plates, but I'm doing pretty good right now.
Speaker 1:Has anybody that has not used their checklist, has that bitten them in any way so far?
Speaker 10:We absolutely don't have a checklist at all and we should because we're bad. But you know, it's like anything, it's when you leave your house or whatever. So you'll start driving and you'll be like did I turn off the pump, did I do this, did I do that? So I think checklists are great and if anybody is good with spreadsheets in here, please email us one, because we'll totally use it.
Speaker 14:Shelby, there's one on our website. I will go there today.
Speaker 6:We used one when we first started, but we have a routine that does not change, and she does her things and I do my things, and then we double, double check the three things in the rig that could break. Like she takes her showers in the morning, I take them at, or she takes it at night and I take it in the morning. So when we're leaving on travel day, one of my jobs on the inside is to put all the soaps and everything in the little Tupperware thing that goes in the bottom, lock the shower door and then I go, take the TV off the wall in the bedroom and get everything placed on the bed and I double check the closet door to make sure it's latched so it doesn't break. Then when Maria goes back through, she double checks that I shut the shower, that the closet's locked, and she closes up the TV in the living room and then, while I'm waiting on her to get stuff for me to carry out to the truck, I double check to make sure that she locked the tv in place.
Speaker 6:And that's just our routine. And if you any of y'all that have walked up to me and John that, they'll tell you I don't care if somebody interrupts me because if you do, I start all over again. I start from step one. As soon as I hook the truck up, I do a walk around the rig and then I double check and physically touch every one of the connections in the truck to make sure that it's it's done. I have to touch things to sorry.
Speaker 10:Sheila so it sounds like we all need to line up by your rig when you're checking out tomorrow, because you have to keep going over and over again.
Speaker 6:Y'all would think it's funny, but I would just keep doing it. I can't tell you how many times I've started. We got stuck in one part. There were like four people that came over and Maureen I kind of have a thing now to where, when I give her the look, it's get these people away from me. And she missed that look and I ended up talking to this guy for an hour and a half and she came outside. She was like, hey, we're supposed to be somewhere in like five minutes and I was like, well, I gave you the look, but I will, I'll start over every time.
Speaker 1:All right, we've got another question if nobody else has Anyone on that one.
Speaker 11:We all kind of touched on a few of these. But what's? Some of the funniest things that have either happened to you or you have seen since you've been on the road.
Speaker 1:I love how you threw the general public potentially in there too.
Speaker 8:When we were in Florida, we once saw a guy walking a chicken On a leash or like in his arm On a leash. Okay, and then just recently we saw someone in an RV park that had a goat in their RV Full-size goat as a pet, as a pet.
Speaker 7:All of these things are normal for us they also have a brown couch now.
Speaker 6:That was Lawrence's cousin.
Speaker 7:I think, and this wasn't funny for the poor guy who was doing this, but where were we In Virginia, somewhere in a state park in Virginia, and I don't think he really understood how to empty a black tank. And we were behind him and this poor, I mean I feel bad because we were laughing, but the poor guy, he I can't even remember what happened. He didn't get close enough, so he put the septic, the stinky, slinky, onto it and emptied it and it popped off the rig and so, instead of closing it, he picked up the pipe and tried to push it on and then it pulled out the other side. So it was, and he just didn't know. He went on a full-on panic and I feel really bad now.
Speaker 6:That's a straight-up situation.
Speaker 7:It was, but we were very patient. We were it was, but we were very patient. We were in a rush, we were very patient. I was going to go and help him, but I didn't want to be anywhere near all of that stuff. And anyway, he was there for about an hour cleaning himself up. He was in his pajamas as well, which I thought was weird, so I don't think he was leaving. I think he was just empty. He's obviously halfway through a a shower and the tank filled, so he quickly ran down to the dump station. Yeah, so I feel really bad for him. He was absolutely covered. He was all on his arms, all up his legs. I did film it. I did not put it on the channel because I didn't think that would be fair, but yeah, oh, I feel sick just thinking about it Just blur his face out.
Speaker 1:That's true.
Speaker 12:I still have the footage. We'll put it as a short. Sometimes when I drive I speed and every time I speed Shelby yells at me. She says, hey, slow down. There was one time where Shelby told me I had to speed up and speed. You want to say why? Oh, yeah.
Speaker 10:So I don't remember where we were, but we were driving and I look up and it looks like there's dismembered bodies on the top of somebody's roof. And I had no idea it was on a car when we were driving and I had no idea what's going on. I'm like this is so weird. So I'm like speed up, speed up, and I have a picture of it and it's somebody. They were driving on a car, down the road, on a with their car, and they had like four mannequin bodies, all like that you see in stores some had legs, some didn't, some had arms and was like what the heck is going on here? She's going speed up, speed up.
Speaker 10:I'm like I didn't know what I was seeing, because at first you're like, what Is this for real? And it really was. So I don't know what they were doing with that, but you know, maybe they were going to get your tape and wire and all of that.
Speaker 1:So, mike, let me do one thing because I have a jack speeding story. So, day one of RVU production you guys are pulling from your prep site down and of course everybody's queued up ready to come into this thing, except one couple.
Speaker 10:We are always late, we apologize, we know.
Speaker 1:We've accepted it Me. But now we're waiting on you guys at this point, and so I think you start to get maybe a few text messages. I think I sent one, some other guys may have sent one, and then out of nowhere, and if you have, how many people have been to Camp Margaritaville in Auburndale, okay? So when you come in to the park right by those main front gates, off to the right, that big field by the gator-infested lake, that's where they boondock for the show we have to come out and then make a U-turn into that little gravel lot. They flew rocks when he made that turn. I could have sworn that rig was going to dump on its side. If you could fishtail a fifth wheel, he did. I was excited and he was still 20 minutes late. Yeah, that's true, I can only imagine the people in the park. Was still 20 minutes late? Yeah, that's true, I can only imagine the people in the park. If you hit those speed bumps at that speed you probably might bounce your rig.
Speaker 9:All right, Mike. Sorry, go ahead, I forgot my story. I'm sorry. I'm on the struggle bus this morning. I got a quick one.
Speaker 1:Separate you two.
Speaker 8:I got a quick one when we were in Palm Springs, california, one time. We were sitting, it was in the morning time and we were drinking our coffee, looking out the window and we see this RV pull in back into the site next to us, run right over the water, bib, create a geyser, get out, look at it, panic, take off, doors open. I mean stairs were down Like they didn't want to get caught or something and they just took off and left the park and there's this geyser, just keep on going. So I hope we walked over the office yeah anybody else got one, all right.
Speaker 6:So this isn't funny, it's kind of concerning how many of y'all. So I'm a point A, point B person and if I can find a way to lessen the cost along the way, like an overnight boondock on the side of the interstate, or I mean just I'll stay in some sketchy places that other people won't. Maria can't stand it, but we'll stay in a rest stop. I'll stay on the side of the interstate. You know, we'll stay in a tar pit where they gathered up stuff to repave roads.
Speaker 6:And I think we were on our way to the Michigan huddle and we were coming from the west coast up to Michigan and we decided to go through Minneapolis and I didn't want to pay for an RV park. So I told Maria we're Methodists, we'll just call the Methodist church and give them Bishop Graves' name and tell them you know we're not lying. Can we please stay in the parking lot? So of course you know most of the stuff that comes out of my mouth Maria's like you have lost your mind, just rent an RV space. So I call the Methodist church and they're like absolutely, you just have to be gone by 8 am in the morning. Please park, you know over by the trees because we have a little construction going on.
Speaker 6:So we pull into this parking lot and we're talking to our daughter on the phone and I noticed these people walking around and I told Maria. I was like I don't think we can stay here and she has not seen these people yet. So she's like one. I was like I think there's some strange people here. And she looks over her shoulder and she looks back at me and I'd already dumped the air out of the airbags to get the fifth wheel level and she's like get out of here. It was a pimp and three of his prostitutes In a church parking lot.
Speaker 1:All right, please cut off.
Speaker 7:This is disgusting Clay, but where was this?
Speaker 6:I'll send you the pin, thank you.
Speaker 1:Lawrence, please tell I don't even want to unpack what that meant when you said that as far as like, is it a like, maybe opportunity to make some money or spend money?
Speaker 7:I just don't believe him. I need to check it out for myself.
Speaker 6:Okay, that's what it is Maria's sitting here and she'll usually tell you if I'm lying or not. Am I lying?
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 18:All right, we've got another question from the audience. Hey guys, we've really enjoyed the opportunity to get to meet and visit with most of you guys. My question is what advice would you have for creator slash channel in its infancy to kind of continue to grow, or what did you find worked for you guys to kind of get started and get and get your, your brand out there?
Speaker 8:just keep plugging away. That's the biggest piece of advice. Just keep putting content out there. You're just going to get better and better and better the more you do it. You're not going to be a master editor your first year of doing youtube probably but just keep plugging away yeah, there's no.
Speaker 6:What we've figured is and everybody says this and it sounds so hard to obtain it's 100% the content, and it's not who puts the content together and it's not how you put the content together, it's the subject matter, and that subject matter has to be at the perfect point in time that a bulk of the audience out there wants to see it. Um, we knocked one out of the park with how to generate revenue on on the road and that one was one of the biggest ones that we did. But up until that point, we struggled to get 600 views on any video and it's because people were looking how to generate revenue. Now, once you get up to the status of a really big channel, people are going to follow you.
Speaker 6:For the personalities, unfortunately for us I have a very off-putting personality. Clay, you're a treat to me, but it really is just constantly keep putting stuff out until enough. People see the subject matter that you're putting out there and fall in love with your personality or your character and then watch you for what you put out, not necessarily the content.
Speaker 9:Mike, I would say it's very, very easy to get caught up in the analytics and the numbers and how many subscribers do I have and how many views am I getting, and all that stuff. Really none of that matters. The really thing that matters is are you making the best content you possibly can? And if you focus on that and then you focus on all the things you have to do to create that great content and what you need to do to be very consistent with your content, if you put out a video a week, you know be as consistent as you can with it and also think ahead about you know what are your big goals.
Speaker 9:Why do you have a channel? What's, how do you want to serve the RV community with your channel and then try to stick to that philosophy as you move ahead in your journey. It'll really help give you the purpose that you need. That will supply you the drive that you need to be able to pull this off, because it's a lot of work, and so I would focus on the things that are really the most important part of being a good YouTuber, which are not the numbers. Don't get caught up in that.
Speaker 1:So I would say just kind of on Mike, because I'm slightly a panelist on this one too. When Mike said goals, I think your goals have to automatically change. And not only your goals, but understand your why for those goals. And not only your goals, but understand your why for those goals. Because when you're really small, if I asked every single person on this panel, they'd probably have a similar but slightly different reason why they started the channel. We wanted our family to know where we were, we wanted to tell a very specific story, we wanted to share a process, and so if you understand that goal or that reason why and it can change it doesn't have to be the same thing the entire duration, like Todd and Sheila's goal has changed. Like you started because of sheila, your dad and kind of that was your why to get out, and now it's about community and so it's changed. That would be my thing is just understand it and progress with it as well I just want to try one thing.
Speaker 12:Um, has anyone ever watched the show Orange County Choppers? Okay, what was that show about? How did the show start? It started as a show of making custom motorcycles. That's why the Learning Channel or somebody put up all the money to do it and they quickly realized the show is not about the backdrop, that's just the backdrop. The show is about the interaction between a father and son.
Speaker 12:The reason Shelby and I watch so many of these channels is the people up here do a very good job of showing the interaction between each other and I relate to that and Shelby and I relate to that. So, although the backdrop for us is RVs, or for other people it's traveling through Europe, or for other people it's sewing Europe, or for other people it's sewing, if you can tie in the human aspect, more people will relate to that and watch it. That's why we do, and if you can kind of stick to that, then there's no perfection on the backdrop or the perfection of RVing, because it's not perfect, that's just the backdrop. You can be perfect at relating to who you are. I think that's where it's at.
Speaker 1:Anybody else got one, I'm going to give you encouragement.
Speaker 4:Oh go ahead. I'm going to give you a little encouragement. Nobody is going to watch your video.
Speaker 1:Deep thoughts with Todd.
Speaker 4:Here's the reason I say this. The why is the only thing that's important. Period when I tell people this, I said it yesterday as well. I started creating YouTube content in 2009. Content in 2009. I've done over I'm going to say 1,300 videos before Switch it Up ever started. And most of those videos the why was because I wanted to share and I wanted something for my kids' kids and their kids to know who we were and what we did. Never once did I ever think that it would turn into anything. I hoped one day maybe, but it wasn't going to be a career choice. The why was it was a creative outlet for me and sharing and stuff Nobody watched.
Speaker 4:You can look at Todd Conitzer. You can look at Todd's Crazy Adventures. I mean I created multiple videos and nobody watched. You can look at Todd Connitzer. You can look at Todd's Crazy Adventures. You can look up. I mean I created multiple videos and nobody watched. When our Y changed to hit the road and we developed Switch it Up, again, nobody was going to watch, but for us, I wanted to document our journey to share with our and it's just costumes, help. I guess I was a sawdust fairy and I've been a dinosaur.
Speaker 1:You are welcome.
Speaker 4:Yes. So I've done a lot of fun stuff, but again, it's just because I got a weird sense of humor and you guys all just jumped on and started watching and it's a blessing. But our why changed when Sheila sat one day and she goes I don't know what to do. She doesn't like to make videos and I was like you're. Then this is what you're going to do. Every video, when somebody comments, you pour into that person, you find out who they are and what, and that's her heart, and I say it all the time. We are all here because of her. It may be my crazy antics, but none of us would be here without her pouring her heart into the community of the RV space and you. It's true, the amount of work she pours into this. It's a blessing to all of us. But I want to give you encouragement because we all sucked. We still suck. A lot of you tell me how bad.
Speaker 4:I suck on my videos. They're too shaky, the volume's not good. This and that. Don't let that. You're a Christian. You're going to get every hate comment. You're going to get all that. Just smile and there's this beautiful button called Block and you don't ever have to see them again.
Speaker 1:Unless you give them their cell phone number and they automatically say please stop making me want to vomit because of the shakiness.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, yeah, you do that too.
Speaker 1:Thank you for buying the Osmo Pocket 3, by the way, you're welcome, lawrence. You want to try and follow that up now.
Speaker 7:No.
Speaker 1:No, no, no. I'm good thanks.
Speaker 7:Nope, you're going to do it anyway, I can't remember what I was going to say. I think for someone that's starting on YouTube, I think the most important thing is to make sure your personality is front and center. If you cannot sleep at night, go and watch our very first video, because that's what I use to put me to sleep. It's so boring.
Speaker 7:Natalie's disappearing into that screen Please don't she's going to go and unlist it now. It was awful. It was scripted. We were sat there talking, we did very few overlays. It honestly is the most boring. And then eventually we were trying to push it and get more subscribers and it gets very addicting trying to get more subscribers and it's like I can't remember who said it. Someone said, stop looking at the numbers. I think it was you and it's true. We really don't look at the numbers anymore and we just film what we're doing and what we think is funny and what's going on, and we kind of do it off the cuff. You know, we originally started to make it all cinematic just because I love all that stuff, but people didn't like to watch it and so as soon as we brought our personality out and we were just ourselves and just started doing stuff and filming it, that's really when the channel grew up.
Speaker 1:So you started drinking on camera, that's also. Or at least before the camera came on Exactly. So I do have a very specific question, just because this is my analytical brain curiosity but do you guys and I don't know how to quantify this, but because you're British do you see a little bit of a spike over there versus the states?
Speaker 7:no, um, canada, yeah, that's not a word. Canada is our second biggest, and also we see a lot of guys from india. Uh, yeah, do, is that just us, or is we get a little bit?
Speaker 1:oh okay, that's weird okay, yeah, no, we.
Speaker 7:We have a lot of viewers from india on a lot of things. So, um, but yeah, no, it's really the us, it's canada, india and then a very few in the UK, which is probably just my mom, to be honest.
Speaker 1:Is it like a disowned thing, like please go, just stay over there?
Speaker 14:I think it's also important to know that we're all still learning. We're at very different points in our careers and different followings and whatnot, and we're all still learning, though we're adapting as we go and learning from each other. So reach out to the people that are in your community on that, and we have a saying that's when God opens doors, you walk through them, and so when you find opportunities, make sure to say yes to those.
Speaker 1:And be aware of the ones that are close, so you don't smack your head into it.
Speaker 14:Again.
Speaker 3:Again.
Speaker 1:Just yeah, Are you ready for your question now? Sorry.
Speaker 3:I'm going to stand up for this one. I've got to stand up for this one because I want to make sure that you'll all see us out here, because we are so grateful for all the time and effort you put into creating your content, the hours that you spend doing it, to entertain us, to inform us. We appreciate it because we spend a lot of time watching your videos. Yeah, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, appreciate it because we spend a lot of time watching your videos. So I'm going to take a look a little bit further down the road, just a little bit for this question, because I know some of you have newer channels, some of you have channels that have been around for a long time, and so one of the things I noticed is that the RV YouTube world kind of got saturated, yeah, and so how have you thought about how to diversify? I mean, turn it up world, come on Slots.
Speaker 3:My husband stayed up until midnight last night because of it. But how do you decide? We talked about the why, which is good, but how do you know when to shift gears? How do you know when to pivot?
Speaker 1:Can I just clarify one thing? Do you mean pivot inside of the RV space itself or just YouTube in general? Because I think that's important Content, content across. Okay, go ahead Clay.
Speaker 6:So we don't even consider that. And here's why, as much as we appreciate every one of y'all that watch one of our videos and I'd like to apologize for some of the ones you've had to watch we're not necessarily doing it for y'all Um One. We do it for us, as to what we want to portray to our grandkids, our great-grandkids. If the platform is still available and if y'all happen to enjoy it, then that's just a bonus and we'd love to hear it and love to see that. But ultimately, we're not doing this for a living. We're doing this because, you know, I've got a good friend that that called me a couple months ago and he said hey, clay, do you think that it's possible to use a servo gx to do location tracking on my fifth wheel? And I said you know, wait, never even thought about it, give me a couple days. That gave me a project that I ended up filming that I think 12 people watched. But I I wrote code and showed step by step how to log into a servo gx, place this code on it and use it for gps tracking so that you don't have to buy you know another system or something. Um, I thought it was really cool. Again. One person in here also thought it was cool, and I'm okay with that because I wanted to put that out.
Speaker 6:Maria, and just so y'all know, we've transitioned. Maria doesn't do any of the video editing anymore, I do all of it. So when Maria was doing it, it was more about travel and the pictures and things like that. Now that I'm doing it, it's way more technical. How to. If you've got this problem, here's how we solved it. But as far as switching gears to pick up another 20,000 subscribers, not even a thought in our brain.
Speaker 17:When we started our channel, it's predominantly about RV tours, sprinkled in with a few tips and how-tos, and so obviously I'm not comfortable public speaking, which is why I'm always behind the camera. So our channel is predominantly about tours, and we were not full timers. We were home and so that was easy for us. That was something that we could very easily do. We weren't sharing our lifestyle. When we decided to hit the road more often, we wondered should we pivot to be a lifestyle channel? And we thought a lot about it.
Speaker 17:We had some sleepless nights and I just came to the conclusion that I just couldn't do it. I could not be comfortable sharing all day long or my experience or being in front of the camera. So I just thought you know what, despite the fact that we might be on the road more and we may have opportunity to share more things, which we can do if that does come up I prefer sticking to what we were most comfortable with and what was working for us. So we did have that moment in time where we wondered should we shift, should we do something different? And, knowing that we just weren't comfortable doing that, we stuck in our lane.
Speaker 9:I'll also piggyback on that a little bit and say, even though we did stay in our lane, we also read every comment that we get on our YouTube channel, and we really listen to our audience. So when they were telling us, hey, you know, we'd like you to, we'd like to see this, that and the other thing in your RV tour, we would add those things to, you know, to what we were covering, and so I think there's just a whole bunch of information that your audience will give you if you're looking to learn more about are you serving the needs of your viewer? Are you giving them the information or the entertainment value that they want? You can even ask people and they'll, and they'll be happy to tell you what they'd like to receive. But for us, you know, our audience has helped us a ton along the way, and once you get a few requests for something, if you get three or four requests, there's probably a lot more people that are thinking the same thing, and so you can pivot along those lines within what you're trying to do.
Speaker 9:I also. The world has become very, very saturated with YouTubers, and so I do think a real big key to all this is finding something that's different that no one else is doing and that can set you apart and really help your channel to take off and grow. So if you can find a way to serve the community, that's a very different angle or a different way of doing things. I think there's a lot of merit to that. There's a lot of merit to that.
Speaker 1:And I would say too like. So we have this conversation. Especially the last few months, Lauren and I have had this conversation a lot because she still works a full-time job and so it's really just me, and then she kind of comes in and goes and that's why you get a lot of it. But I do 100% of the channel for the most part. But we, you know everybody up here is going to say if you're going to do RV stuff, stay in RV stuff From an analytical, if that's how you're going to look at it, right. And so we're in the middle of a cruise series on our channel right now and I've always said we're a travel channel first. That happens to predominantly RV because we full-time or used to full-time as of two weeks ago.
Speaker 1:And so I've thought about how I want to justify this to myself and it's like, well, I'd rather share experiences, if that makes sense, and it's not necessarily because I'm looking for the quick analytical payback if I kind of did the whole. I mean, seo is a thing on every video search engine optimization and you can follow trends and try to follow those trends. But at the end of the day, I'd much rather share the experiences, and sometimes that's not always in an RV now it is for us, but sometimes it's on a cruise, sometimes it's in a setting like this. You never know where that experience that you want to share might pop up for us, and so that's why I've kind of shifted that mentality to I just want to share the experience, more so than stay in a box. If that makes sense and if we do it the right way, I feel like at least over time, the viewership, the followership will come. As long as we always try to get better at one thing and that's my ultimate goal is just get better at one thing, every video.
Speaker 8:And as content creators, we understand that when we're creating a video, it's going to go into a category, right, it's either going to be a video where it's going to get a whole bunch of views right away and then kind of die off A video where it's going to get a whole bunch of views right away and then kind of die off. Or it's going to be what we call an evergreen video, where it gets a few views but it maintains those few views over a period of time. And here's the sad reality Thumbnails. Thumbnails is what drives views to videos and, unfortunately, who hates clickbait thumbnails? Me too, but guess what? People click on them. They work, unfortunately, and to get people to.
Speaker 8:So here's how I view a clickbait thumbnail. Clickbait thumbnail to me is if you have a thumbnail that is completely not related to the video the content in the video that you're putting out that to me is a clickbait video. The content in the video that you're putting out that to me is a clickbait video or thumbnail. Then you have thumbnails that we try to do that make people want to click on it to get an answer to the question that's in their head by looking at that thumbnail. If I'm looking at a thumbnail, it should generate some kind of question that makes me go hmm, I need to click on that because I want to know the answer, but it has to be related to the content of the video. If it doesn't, it's not related, then that's clickbait. So that's the society that we live in people, they, they, they want to know the answer to the question they have. So, yeah, drama. Unfortunately, drama sells do you guys?
Speaker 4:I know there's a misnomer right here and I'm going to spill the beans. I know the perception is when people start a YouTube channel for RVing, they can make money so they can stay on the road. That's why they do it.
Speaker 6:For anybody that believes that, come see me and I will show you the revenue we generated from our biggest video.
Speaker 4:I'm going to tell you right now Switch it up A channel of 67,000 and we have a very great community. We average, I think, this last month we made $1,400 on YouTube Our biggest month the videos when we posted and we did that. Our biggest month on YouTube was $4,000. But it was one month. The rest of the time it's not as much as you think. I can guarantee you that a lot of us are in the same, similar position. Some channels are bigger, but if in your mind you're thinking they're making 10, 15 and 20 thousand a month, that ain't happening if you've seen in a church parking lot with like pimps and, yeah, I should have filmed that that would have been a big video I that.
Speaker 16:Alright.
Speaker 4:How did you know? Did you ask the question? Are you a pimp?
Speaker 6:I will say we did do a little assuming. It's probably the cane and the leopard printed, but when they all piled out of a broke down Honda Civic, missing a door, with three wheels, with hardly any clothes on. I don't think they were going to get baptized.
Speaker 7:How much did you pay them?
Speaker 6:It was $40 for 15 minutes, but if you paid $100, you could get a quarter ounce of crack with it we're gonna move on now so I've got a question for all of yous and I don't know to me this has always been a question that's really never been answered.
Speaker 2:So y'all talk, you know, comment all that thing, and just how much it actually helps you guys. So to me I don't feel right in liking a video until I've watched it at the end. Well, one of the things a lot of videos end before they really let you know they're ending and so you don't have the ability to like in that case, so you almost have to do it beforehand. So can you kind of elaborate on how that helps you and what helps you the most? The infamous.
Speaker 8:YouTube algorithm.
Speaker 1:I was going to say first of all, if the video ends, there is a back button at the top left of your screen there that you can go back and then hit. Like Just saying, All right.
Speaker 6:Anybody. So here's what my research has determined it is the luck of the draw when you post the thing and how many people like you. And I'd like to point out I think what everybody's talking about when they say consistent is you don't want to stray too far from, like Jack was saying, the main backdrop of your channel. So if they're more about themselves with the RV being the background, they don't want to stray too far away from interaction between themselves. For Maria and I we're all over the place. You know we'll tell you how to generate revenue on the road in an RV, but then you know I'll also give you a technical solution to something else. So when YouTube sees our content, if you think of it as a circle and then divided like a pie with multiple rings on the inside, when you first release that, it gets put into a quadrant and then when you click that I liked it it scores that and it looks at the other stuff that you watched and then it finds the things that you watched and it'll share it to other people that watched it and if they like it too, it starts to hone in on a group of people that it presents it to. So if you don't get a like, you get no steering of the algorithm, and the only people that watch it are the ones that subscribe.
Speaker 6:And here's the funny thing we have 17, almost 18,000 subscribers. I can release a video and less than 800 will be presented with that video in the first 24 hours. So it's key that if you like the video, then YouTube shares it more. It's also key to watch at least the first 30 seconds, because if you don't, then YouTube just kind of throws that away as a non-view. The longer you watch it, the more it thinks it's holding your interest, because we're the product that YouTube is selling and they're selling it to you. They want to keep you engaged on YouTube for longer to see those ads and increase their revenue. Now, they don't care if you watch me or Jason or Jack, or switch it up. They could not care less about us. What they want to do is maintain your attention. So when you comment on something that goes towards engagement, when you like it, when you share it, that means that you're engaged, you're staying on their platform, and then they recommend more of our stuff because of that.
Speaker 4:Brilliant. You sum that up great.
Speaker 14:I would say the other thing is you can always like it and then if you decide you don't, you could remove it if you really wanted to, but at least then you know it's there.
Speaker 4:Please don't.
Speaker 14:Hey, he'd like more if we knew.
Speaker 1:And not that this is a selfless plug, but in podcast it's completely different and that just throws another layer of complexity because there's a follow button on podcast. But at the end of the day just hitting that follow button and turning on auto downloads actually helps the most on that front, because there is no comment department in podcast world so so what?
Speaker 12:what clay said right there? I'm going to try my best. I apologize, but scratchy. What clay said there, along with the pivot question, is super important because if you pivot your channel, then what youtube knew to do with you to show to people is now completely different and youtube gets confused as to who to show you to. Now I'll give you an example as a fledgling channel, shelby and I made a few videos after we filmed rv unplugged.
Speaker 12:We made a few videos of just us spilling our rig, doing what we always do messing up. So we did that and people watched. And then we wanted to make videos for RV Unplugged to pay homage to the fact that this show changed our lives. So we felt dedicated to RV Unplugged. Ryan told me that content will be so specific you're going to see a dip, and we did it anyway consciously with that advice and he was correct. So anyone else who's been on the show RV Unplugged might have seen a dip when you do specific RV Unplugged related material. We did that on purpose and we did it, and we knew that we would not get 3,000 views, 10,000 views, and that was fine. So we did that on purpose. But Clay's point, along with the pivot question. You combine those two and you might make a conscious decision to do it anyway, because that's what you want to do, but the algorithm might not know what to do with you all right.
Speaker 1:So just as a heads up, we only have a few minutes left and I have three questions queued up, so that's probably all we're going to have time left for, just as a heads up so when you guys started your channel, how many of you all started your channel with the intention of running as a business, versus just doing it because you enjoy doing it? What did you do to my microphone? I'm just kidding.
Speaker 8:We just did it to create an archive. We always tell people how cool would it be to watch your great-grandparents' YouTube videos from like the 20s, how awesome would that be. And then it kind of just morphed into a business once we realized that we could be sued for content, even though if it wasn't intentional trying to make someone mad with our content then we created an LLC just to protect ourselves.
Speaker 1:I was gonna say I think that's a double-ended question because I don't think many of us start with the intent of making content for a business. But I think, like for us, we started the actual formation of the company very early on, but for the reasons what we just heard, and I just want to be as a whole, I'm more of a business person and so I wanted to be prepared on the backside. The worst that happens is I deform the company. But I never thought of that when making the content at first.
Speaker 9:It just kind of became an easy transition because it already existed in the background. When I started RV Blogger, I fully intended it to be a business. I had to replace my income at work so I could hit the road and enjoy the lifestyle. I had to build our income enough so Susan could quit her job so she could come along with me, and so we spent a lot of time probably a good solid year researching what the business model was that we wanted to use, how we wanted to do it, how to make it multifaceted. So we just didn't have one income stream. We had many income streams coming in, and so you know, you can make this whatever you would like it to be.
Speaker 9:It works for everyone, no matter how you do it. Just because I started it with the intention of it being a business that's going to help pay for us to get on the road and become our full-time jobs, and somebody else started a channel because they wanted to have it for their kids and grandkids, the result's the same, or could be the same. You still get a lot of views, but I'm not sure exactly if I'm answering your question. Though. Is there an underlying question to your question about why it would be a business versus Mike? You're making me move.
Speaker 11:Sorry, Ryan, but you need the exercise an underlying question to your question about why it would be a business versus Mike. You're making me move. Sorry, ryan, but you need the exercise. No, I was just curious because you know we have a small channel and we're trying to grow it and I was just curious how many of you guys just started out like, hey, this is fun. When I was a kid, I made 8mm movies all for fun, and now we're doing it on YouTube and we're making a lot of money, like you guys are. Um, but I was just curious how many came into this with the intention of doing it as a business. Yeah, so you, you answer my question.
Speaker 1:Yes, all right, great, and unfortunately mike's mike. Ironically, he's gonna be cut off for the rest of the day. All right now I got to get back to my other question as far as switch it up goes.
Speaker 4:We didn't start with the intention of a business, so that's that's us. We. We developed into community. We have to be a business because our liability is so much, with all the different elements and insurances now and stuff. But the mission now we design. I think we've now developed into a mission that has a business proponent because I mean, we're, we live by faith and we don't have a ton of money and so we have to negotiate brands to help move the mission forward and our ultimate goal is to make ourselves irrelevant. That sense like the crew camp outs are led by crew people in the switch it up community and we're not there. So I guess that would be how to move forward in a mission without us. How is having to be the forefront to everything and make the mission? It didn't start that way, but we have many different aspects. Love to talk to you more in depth on it if you really want to know.
Speaker 1:But and he may stop talking about it at some point. If you get him going, he can roll with it, because we've had those conversations I want to piggyback on that just a little bit.
Speaker 9:And you know, part of running your business is having an exit plan. I didn't start this business with the intention of being able to run a business for the rest of my life. It has specific goals that I'd like it to achieve, and so there's an exit plan attached to it somewhere along the way. And so if you're thinking about this, whether it a business or not, for you, you know what is your real plan? Why are you doing it? What do you hope to achieve or accomplish, and then what? How are you going to know when you get there and then what's going to happen when you achieve that goal? And so many times, especially when you get caught up in this business, what happens is you keep moving the goal posts, you achieve the, and then it's like, wow, maybe I can do more, let's back those goalposts up a little bit, and you can find yourself on the treadmill pretty quick, which is what a lot of us left the corporate treadmill.
Speaker 1:So be careful of that for sure I feel attacked by that treadmill comment, but whatever.
Speaker 6:Sticking with the theme, man, I know, when we went full-time, the first thing that we did was we got in touch with a CPA, because you can build out an LLC and there's a whole set of issues that come with that that you have to keep track of. But you don't have to have an LLC to take advantage of the tax write-offs that living a full-time, you can do it as a DBA. So I would say, know your situation and talk to a really good CPA and then figure out if you need to create an LLC for those protections, because I mean, an LLC is basically there just for liability protection. It's in the name of the corporation. The DBA is just pass-through through income, the same as an LLC. So I would say, talk with a CPA to see if you get to that point and need it. Perfect, thank you all right.
Speaker 16:Next question okay, as like a semi-professional YouTube viewer and with with a serious case of ad ad. What's important to me when I watch your, you, what watch youtubes is first I click on it, then I got to put up with a 30 second commercial or you know I skip through a couple of them. You know you got the nine second and and then if it doesn't grab me in about the first 30, 40 seconds seconds, I'm gone. So when you create your content, maybe you start out with this is what we're going to do today or whatever. You've got to hook me, otherwise I'm gone. And you know, just as you're putting these together.
Speaker 16:I mean, think about that, but you had mentioned earlier or just a little bit ago and kind of took me off. My question is we discovered in my in-laws house about an hour and a half of 16mm film from the 50s and 60s where her grandparents went to Alaska with a pickup camper, took her brothers, we got Alaska trips, a lot of them, a lot of ranch life from the 50s and 60s. 50 years from now, your grandkids are going to watch what you guys are doing and it is so cool to look back and see what great grandma and great grandpa did when they went to Alaska.
Speaker 8:So I think that's really awesome what you guys are doing, but remember that first 30 seconds is super important to guys like me yeah it's important to the YouTube algorithm too, and when we we have a what's called an audience retention chart that accompanies each video we put out, and the first 30 seconds are always your biggest indicator. That's always your biggest drop of viewers in your first 30 seconds and it'll tell you if it's above typical or below typical or whatever. So, yeah, we do keep an eye on that, but that's awesome feedback.
Speaker 6:Here's the other, and I'm probably the only one up here dumb enough to actually say this. So for every one of you, there's another one on this side over here that says I hate it when you immediately jump into the give me, ease me into it. So it's a balance of. Everybody tries to create that hook in the first 30 seconds, but for every person that that loves red, there's another one that hates it and the comments are just full of it. So it's a. You're trying to hit the average of your viewing viewership and you just have to accept the fact that you're going to piss off 50% of everybody every single time.
Speaker 1:All right, this is going to be our last question.
Speaker 17:Thank you for being here.
Speaker 5:When you guys go on your vacations do you just not want to film anything? Just have time for yourselves.
Speaker 15:Okay good, and how do you determine when it's a vacation and when it's not?
Speaker 9:When we land in jamaica.
Speaker 4:We, sheila and I, just did a cruise, just the two of us, for the first time since we've left and in four years did not film anything. And there was some. If you know us and you know the stories, there's some crazy things that happened on that trip, um, but the fact is, is we needed, uh, to be away?
Speaker 5:I for you we have to intentionally plan it. Otherwise, even though we didn't plan on, we took the, we took the camera, we just didn't pick it up. But we we need to just intentionally plan that that camera is not coming out for content purposes, because otherwise your brain just constantly thinks well, how, what we're doing today, what is that content? So you just have to. We had to just be intentionally, say this is a vacation and it's odd, because people are like but you live the vacation lifestyle. They will all agree that this is the rv lifestyle, but we have jobs. Our youtube is a job. I was gonna say for us it's the camera goes or doesn't go, that this is the RV lifestyle, but we have jobs YouTube is a job.
Speaker 1:I was going to say for us it's the camera goes or doesn't go. I mean, if I'm on vacation and I want to document something, phone that's for me, and so if the camera goes, it's a work trip, essentially.
Speaker 8:For us it's normally if we're around family, If we're with our parents or kids or something, then we just don't even film at all. We just won't put a video out that week.
Speaker 6:Maria and I. It's a weekly decision. I've got five videos right now that are probably 75% to 80% done and, after doing this for two and a half, almost three years, got burnt out and now I might do one every couple of weeks. Like I didn't film any of this and I apologize to Todd and Sheila for not posting any of it on social media, but I actually wanted to, to hang out with you guys and not shove a camera in your face, and actually hear and be able to process some of the stuff that y'all are saying.
Speaker 6:Not always did I get the right angle on that, was I shooting from the right position, and so we just wanted to enjoy the rally, and it seems like that gets longer and longer to where we. I don't want to go to a national park and spend all day filming it. I want to go enjoy it park and spend all day filming it. I want to go enjoy it. That's why we started doing this, so now we're starting to scale that back to where we actually pick and choose what we film and the rest of it we don't take a camera.
Speaker 13:And to caveat on what Clay had said sometimes burnout happens, sometimes I'm like I don't want to have my whole life, like I love you all, but sometimes I just want us to go to dinner, be at a campground somewhere and do nothing. Just need that down time to decompress.
Speaker 1:Is your rig like going to vibrate away out there? That bass is insane. There's five, like in that new Twisters movie. It anchors down. Okay, sorry, just wow, um, okay, so coming up. Next we have turn it up world doing a. Let's turn it up world, sorry doing a boondocking seminar. And then we're also, lauren and I, are going to be doing a how to travel on points, kind of pay for our real life, and how to use points to get free travel on the other side by paying that. So we're going to take a quick little break. So use restaurant, come back, but before you go, thank you guys, so much for coming in the questions and if we could give it, ryan, for our panel.
Speaker 5:I think the roadsmiths have made their appearance, hey.
Speaker 1:Well, as you could hear, there was no lack of stories with this panel. We had an absolute blast doing this panel with everybody and we hope that you enjoyed these episodes coming from the united rally. If you did attend the united reality, if you did attend the united rally, thank you so much for showing up. We really loved getting to see, talk, take pictures and just chat with everybody there, and we can't wait to see everybody out in the world once again. If you enjoyed this podcast, do us a favor hit that little follow button on your favorite podcast platform whether that be Spotify podcast, apple podcast, youtube, any of the things and share it with a friend or somebody that you think might get a kick or information out of this podcast. Thank you so much and We'll chat next week.
