RPF0502-FI_in_10_Years-RV_Mechanic
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00:00:16.200 | Today on Radical Personal Finance, we continue our "Pathways to Financial Freedom in 10
00:00:21.320 | Years or Less" series with a discussion of my idea of working as an RV mechanic.
00:00:45.480 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, the show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,
00:00:48.720 | skills, insight, encouragement and inspiration that you need to live a rich and meaningful
00:00:54.200 | life now while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.
00:00:57.360 | My name is Joshua Sheets.
00:00:58.360 | I am your friendly financial philosopher and fellow traveler down this road of financial
00:01:03.960 | freedom.
00:01:04.960 | Today, I'm going to sketch out for you a blueprint that I think you can use and adapt to your
00:01:10.160 | situation.
00:01:13.640 | Today's episode is – well, I guess we'll call it the second in a very occasional series
00:01:22.480 | that I'm calling the "Pathways to Financial Freedom in 10 Years or Less" series.
00:01:26.480 | The first episode in this series was episode 476 in which I talked about pathways to financial
00:01:31.840 | freedom in 10 years or less and I used the idea of working as an expediter, expedited
00:01:38.640 | trucking and other live-on-the-job opportunities and I sketched out how you could use a career
00:01:43.320 | such as expediting as a way for you to achieve financial freedom very quickly, especially
00:01:48.400 | in that 10-year or less time frame.
00:01:51.280 | This is something I say to you every day when I open the show.
00:01:54.360 | I say financial freedom in 10 years or less and I want to consistently paint these pathways
00:01:59.000 | out for you.
00:02:00.000 | Now, there's nothing easy about any of these paths but they're very, very doable and today
00:02:05.320 | I'm going to share with you a new one that I think will be illustrative and instructive
00:02:11.080 | for you and that is as working as an RV mechanic.
00:02:14.600 | But I want to emphasize this point.
00:02:18.480 | As you listen to me go through this idea, don't listen just for the specific idea.
00:02:22.840 | You may care nothing about RVs.
00:02:25.040 | You may care nothing about working as a mechanic.
00:02:27.400 | You may not like this specific idea at all.
00:02:30.200 | But listen for the themes in the progression of this business that I'm about to describe
00:02:36.480 | for you and listen to what you have to actually do to build financial freedom.
00:02:41.760 | Listen not just for RV mechanic but listen for how you increase income, decrease expenses,
00:02:49.720 | invest wisely and then optimize lifestyle.
00:02:53.200 | We're not going to talk about avoiding catastrophe today, just optimizing lifestyle.
00:02:57.400 | Recently I had somebody come over to do a little bit of work on my RV.
00:03:01.520 | I have an older RV and I try to do a lot of the things on it myself but sometimes it's
00:03:06.360 | just intimidating to do things you've never done and also often you don't have all the
00:03:12.040 | tools, you don't have all the supplies.
00:03:13.600 | I needed some stuff done especially I had a leak in the roof and I had it planned to
00:03:17.960 | work on it, planned to work on it, planned to work on it.
00:03:20.200 | Finally I just said, "I'm obviously not getting to it.
00:03:22.480 | My time has been utterly consumed with my radical personal finance projects and my family
00:03:27.280 | obligations and some of my other personal areas.
00:03:29.960 | I just wasn't able to get to this in a timely manner."
00:03:32.600 | So I decided I was going to go ahead and hire the work done.
00:03:35.360 | So I called a couple of local RV repair shops and the ones that I trusted, the one that
00:03:42.000 | I trusted especially, was booked out for a couple of months.
00:03:45.320 | They couldn't even get me in for a couple of months and so they referred me to a local
00:03:49.000 | mobile RV mechanic.
00:03:51.120 | Now the work of a mobile mechanic is something that I've thought has a huge value as I've
00:03:55.240 | looked at it in other areas.
00:03:57.180 | For example, a mobile auto mechanic I think has a lot of advantages.
00:04:00.920 | There are disadvantages to working as a mobile auto mechanic.
00:04:03.440 | You give up some of the niceness of having a shop but there are advantages especially
00:04:07.640 | in the decreased expenses and the more adjustable work schedule.
00:04:11.960 | And of course that same thing can be applied to many other mobile businesses.
00:04:15.280 | There are mobile dog groomers.
00:04:17.240 | There are mobile farriers, the people who shoe horses.
00:04:20.340 | There are mobile boat mechanics and boat repair people.
00:04:23.000 | There are mobile cleaning people.
00:04:24.120 | It's just about any business can be taken and turned mobile.
00:04:27.080 | And in this case we were talking about a mobile RV mechanic, somebody who could just work
00:04:31.560 | on the systems of my RV.
00:04:33.880 | So the guy came by and of course as I always do, I tried to talk to him, hear a little
00:04:38.320 | bit about his story, hear a little bit about the industry.
00:04:41.160 | And I noticed all of these themes that for me are very, very valuable.
00:04:46.020 | First and foremost, you should know that for the repair work that he did for me, he was
00:04:51.480 | charging $95 an hour, offered a flat fee the way he priced his services.
00:04:56.040 | He just charged a flat fee of $95 an hour plus the cost of parts if he needs to use
00:05:01.120 | any specific parts.
00:05:02.440 | $95 an hour is not a bad rate.
00:05:05.720 | $95 an hour would be if you worked a 40-hour a week over the course of a full year, that
00:05:11.360 | would be a total income of about $200,000 if you could do that 40 hours a week.
00:05:16.240 | Now of course I'm ignoring a few expenses, but what expenses are there?
00:05:22.020 | This guy was driving a middle-of-the-road van, just a standard cargo work van, a couple
00:05:27.640 | thousand bucks, a few thousand dollars of tools, really not that much, gas.
00:05:33.960 | And most of his work was pretty simple.
00:05:36.000 | He just had a cell phone that I called and coordinated with, a simple calendar book.
00:05:40.880 | So his expenses were very, very low.
00:05:43.400 | And as we got to talking, we started talking about the careers and he shared with me some
00:05:47.320 | things that I have noticed again and again and again every time I talk with people in
00:05:52.800 | the trades.
00:05:54.200 | Number one, I noticed that he has a very hard time finding good work, workers, finding
00:06:02.760 | good workers, very hard time.
00:06:06.280 | He talked to me about how many people he's tried and he says every time he brings a guy
00:06:10.000 | in, a younger guy, he says either number one, they just don't want to work, they want to
00:06:14.480 | hang out on their phone the whole time instead of working, or two, they don't want to continue
00:06:18.040 | doing the work because it's hard work.
00:06:19.980 | You're out in the sunshine sometimes, you're working in a hot RV, you're actually doing
00:06:23.720 | hard work and he says, typical older guy, the kids these days just want to sit around
00:06:28.880 | and play on their phones.
00:06:29.880 | Guess what?
00:06:30.880 | It's true.
00:06:31.880 | And I've heard that again and again and again from people in the trades.
00:06:35.740 | One of the big opportunities coming up in the coming decades is going to be for skilled
00:06:39.680 | tradespeople.
00:06:41.160 | Skilled tradespeople are getting older, grayer, and they're getting out of the business.
00:06:46.120 | And yet while many of the professional jobs are being shipped overseas, it's relatively
00:06:52.360 | easy if you are working as an accountant to have your job shipped over to a foreign country
00:06:56.640 | and you have the global population that's competing with you for your work.
00:07:01.900 | It's not so easy to ship your plumbing work overseas.
00:07:06.080 | It's not so easy to ship your electrical work overseas and it's not so easy to ship your
00:07:10.840 | RV repair work overseas.
00:07:14.200 | So he starts talking to me about how he'd like to sell his business and yet he doesn't
00:07:20.720 | have anyone who's interested and he doesn't have anyone who will do the work.
00:07:25.280 | Now this guy came from a career in boat repairs but then he moved into RV repairs and he's
00:07:31.160 | done it for many, many years and has good skill and he's very honest.
00:07:34.860 | That was why I got the referral from the RV shop that I called, was because he said he's
00:07:39.480 | honest and that's what you're looking for when someone's going to come and work on your
00:07:42.800 | stuff.
00:07:43.800 | You're looking for somebody who's honest.
00:07:45.020 | So let me explain to you how I would pursue this career and what I would do.
00:07:49.600 | And I'm going to do it for you in the context of let's pretend that I had – let's pretend
00:07:54.960 | that my oldest son is – we're 15 years old and I was giving him advice, something like
00:07:58.840 | that.
00:07:59.840 | Well, if my oldest son were 15 years old at this point in time, this is the type of career
00:08:06.120 | that I would encourage him to pursue during his teenage years.
00:08:11.800 | Any time from that 13, 14, 15, 16, anywhere in there where it works out conveniently,
00:08:17.660 | this is an ideal time for a young man to start apprenticing in a business like RV repair.
00:08:25.480 | Now again, remember, this is in some ways a metaphor.
00:08:28.280 | You could do this in boat repair.
00:08:29.340 | You could do this in almost just any kind of skilled trades.
00:08:33.180 | But this is a good one for that age of young man to apprentice in.
00:08:38.360 | What I would do is I would have my son do his schoolwork in the morning.
00:08:43.040 | He'd do about four hours of specific class instruction from say 8 AM to noon, have a
00:08:47.780 | quick lunch and then I would have him working from 12.30 to 5.30 every day if he could,
00:08:52.780 | if I could arrange the details with rides and all of that with somebody like this other
00:08:57.140 | man.
00:08:58.140 | Now, with this older guy, he can go and basically where you start on these things is you start
00:09:02.400 | as a helper with very little skill.
00:09:05.100 | I did this when I was about 13 years old.
00:09:08.260 | I started working as a helper in the tile business.
00:09:10.980 | You go and you mix up the mud and you cut the tiles in that business.
00:09:13.820 | But while you're around the business, you start to pick things up quickly.
00:09:16.980 | Once the older – what they call mechanic – once the older skilled mechanic starts
00:09:21.300 | to notice that you're interested, then you can learn things very, very quickly and then
00:09:24.820 | you start to do more of the jobs yourself.
00:09:27.100 | So I would apprentice my 15-year-old to somebody like this older guy for a period of years
00:09:34.080 | and he would work as his helper.
00:09:38.360 | Along the way, that 15-year-old would build the skill over the course of an apprenticeship
00:09:43.360 | over two, three years and with some side study – they're actually courses in RV repair
00:09:48.120 | that somebody could take – would build the skill to do the work themselves.
00:09:52.760 | Now this guy that came and worked on my RV wants to sell his business but he can't
00:09:56.840 | find a buyer for it because he can't find somebody who has the skills.
00:09:59.560 | Well, the business that he's selling is the customer lists.
00:10:03.480 | Let's pretend that my son grew past 15 and now he's 17, 18 years old, has a driver's
00:10:10.160 | license, is able to get himself around, has a few years of experience and finds that the
00:10:14.240 | business is helpful and useful for him and it works with his skill sets.
00:10:18.760 | He's developed the necessary skills.
00:10:20.000 | He has interest in running his own business, et cetera.
00:10:22.560 | Then I'd encourage him to go right to work full time in that as a business.
00:10:25.840 | Don't waste years and years studying a specific college course at that point in time.
00:10:31.400 | Go ahead and go right into the business.
00:10:33.000 | Why?
00:10:34.000 | Well, because a skilled RV mechanic as affirmed by the guy I spent some time digging into
00:10:40.360 | details with could very conceivably make a profit, a straight profit of six figures per
00:10:46.520 | year, one guy working out of one van.
00:10:51.920 | If you have the choice between spending six figures to get some non-important degree that
00:10:58.960 | may open the door for you to get a $35,000 a year job or making six figures in a skilled
00:11:06.000 | trade, chances are you should probably go right to making money because those extra
00:11:11.360 | few years of productivity will make a tremendous difference.
00:11:16.400 | So I would encourage my son to go ahead and start the process of buying them out, whether
00:11:20.480 | he starts his own independent business and has to build up his own customer list or buys
00:11:23.800 | out a business owner like this guy.
00:11:25.800 | I didn't talk to him about what he'd want to sell the business for, so I don't know.
00:11:28.860 | But go ahead and pursue the business full time.
00:11:31.840 | Now what are the benefits of a business like a mobile RV repair service?
00:11:36.480 | Well, number one, it's flexible.
00:11:39.240 | It's big time flexible.
00:11:40.540 | So even if my son did want to go to college and then this type of work can easily be scheduled
00:11:45.920 | around a college class schedule.
00:11:49.000 | I would guess the average service call in a business like mobile RV repair would be
00:11:53.240 | a few hours, a couple, three hours.
00:11:56.320 | Most RV repairs are going to be relatively simple.
00:11:59.080 | And so this type of business is a very productive, very financially profitable way for somebody
00:12:04.460 | to earn an income and you can do it on your schedule.
00:12:07.040 | When you're going to show up at your customer's place of residence or place of business, they're
00:12:11.240 | not so concerned about exactly what time you're there.
00:12:14.380 | So if you're taking college classes and you're working this business that you've now built
00:12:18.280 | the skill set in and you have college classes on Tuesday mornings from eight till noon,
00:12:23.620 | you just tell your customer I can be there Tuesday at one o'clock.
00:12:26.300 | Does that work for you or is Wednesday better?
00:12:29.140 | And you schedule your work around your classes.
00:12:31.680 | So it gives you the opportunity to earn at a very high rate of pay because you've invested
00:12:35.760 | time into skill.
00:12:38.420 | Instead of pursuing some dead end bird brain minimum wage job that doesn't have opportunities
00:12:45.080 | for skill advancement, you're just a cog in a machine, you pursued something that you
00:12:50.300 | have unique skill and you can charge $95 an hour.
00:12:54.840 | That's a better move.
00:12:56.700 | So the flexibility of the career helps in those early years.
00:13:02.160 | Now what we would do if I were advising my son in this path is we would generate that
00:13:06.940 | huge amount of income through a lot of hard work.
00:13:10.860 | Whenever there's an opportunity to take paying clients, we take those paying clients with
00:13:15.740 | the goal of stashing as much cash as possible, keep living expenses low, hopefully he can
00:13:20.760 | live with family.
00:13:21.920 | If not, keep living expenses low.
00:13:23.500 | Why don't you get a cheap RV and fix it up and live in it while you're fixing it up?
00:13:27.860 | And with those low expenses, you start to develop significant amounts of investment
00:13:31.380 | capital.
00:13:33.180 | Now with that investment capital, what do you do?
00:13:35.220 | Well, you look first close at hand to find the best investment opportunities, which probably
00:13:41.120 | in this scenario that I'm painting, would be opportunities in fixing up and flipping
00:13:46.760 | RVs for profit.
00:13:49.580 | Finding RVs that somebody doesn't want anymore and shining them up or remodeling them, whether
00:13:54.260 | that's working out in the custom shop, finding some 1955 Airstream and completely renovating
00:14:01.380 | it for a very nice stack of cash or fixing just some minor cosmetic damage or minor water
00:14:07.340 | damage or whatever the opportunities that are found on modern ones and then flipping
00:14:12.300 | those again on Craigslist.
00:14:14.700 | The benefit of working as an RV mechanic would be that you would come in contact with a lot
00:14:19.260 | of RV owners and you would come in contact with a lot of RVs.
00:14:22.660 | If I were doing that job, there would be a couple of things I would do.
00:14:25.760 | Number one, I would always take a few minutes to talk to an owner while I'm doing the work
00:14:29.980 | for them about if they have any interest in selling.
00:14:33.420 | And I would make it clear that I'm always interested in buying older RVs.
00:14:37.220 | I'd always leave a card, a very simple card to say, "Hey, I'm interested in buying older
00:14:41.580 | RVs if you know anybody who's selling them."
00:14:44.740 | Just by telling people that you're interested in buying older RVs, just like by telling
00:14:48.180 | people you're interested in buying older houses or just by telling people you're interested
00:14:51.780 | in buying older fancy watches, you'll start to get some leads on ones.
00:14:56.940 | And then many RV owners are frustrated because they don't really want to own their RV anymore.
00:15:02.620 | A lot of times they're either fixing it up because they want to sell it or they're fixing
00:15:05.520 | it up and it's constantly taking money out of their pocket.
00:15:09.500 | Just like boats, RVs constantly take money out of your pocket.
00:15:14.900 | And so now you have the opportunity to make offers, lowball offers on RVs and see if you
00:15:19.460 | find owners that want to sell.
00:15:21.460 | The way to do it is simple.
00:15:22.460 | You always explain to the person you're buying something from how much you think it would
00:15:26.460 | be worth if you fixed it up.
00:15:28.180 | For example, if I were doing this work, I would go and I would say, "Hey, do you have
00:15:33.100 | an interest in selling?"
00:15:34.100 | "I don't know.
00:15:35.100 | What do you think it's worth?"
00:15:36.100 | "Well, if this RV were fixed up, you could probably put it on Craigslist and you might
00:15:39.660 | be able to sell it for $10,000.
00:15:42.900 | Do you have any interest in selling it now as is without the work done?"
00:15:47.020 | Somebody is looking down and imagining a couple thousand dollar bill and say, "Well, maybe.
00:15:50.060 | What do you got?"
00:15:51.400 | And so you make them an offer and the most simple way to do it is to say something like
00:15:54.740 | this, "Well, I'm probably not the best buyer for it.
00:15:58.420 | After all, this is kind of what I do for a living.
00:16:00.380 | You could probably make more money if you went ahead and shined it up and then put it
00:16:05.160 | out of the retail market.
00:16:06.680 | But if you want to sell it fast, I mean, I give you five grand.
00:16:10.360 | Take it right now."
00:16:11.360 | It's a very honest and straightforward and effective way to buy things inexpensively.
00:16:19.120 | Language is simple.
00:16:20.120 | Again, you'd probably get more money for it.
00:16:22.740 | You may be able to sell it for $10,000 on Craigslist if you can shine it up and fix
00:16:27.080 | everything and get it going.
00:16:28.480 | But if you want to sell fast, I'd be willing to give you five grand for it.
00:16:33.480 | This is what car dealers do all the time.
00:16:35.940 | When you take your car in and you trade it into a dealership, you know you could shine
00:16:40.120 | it up and show it to 10 people on Craigslist and have one of them maybe buy it and give
00:16:44.840 | you a bad check and then resell the thing again and you might get a little bit more
00:16:47.840 | money.
00:16:48.840 | But what's the value of your time?
00:16:49.840 | That's not the business that you're in.
00:16:50.840 | And every time you're trying to arrange a showing to somebody who wants to buy your
00:16:53.600 | car on Craigslist, you got to take time off from work or drive home and keep the car shined
00:16:58.200 | up and keep the battery going and you don't have a license plate for it and it goes on
00:17:01.240 | and on.
00:17:02.240 | So you take it to the dealer and you know the dealer is giving you less money than you
00:17:04.720 | could in the open market but you're happy to take it because, well, I'll go ahead and
00:17:09.560 | just sell it quickly for cash.
00:17:12.720 | So you put the same thing to work for you.
00:17:15.040 | Now as an RV mechanic, you're not going to be booked 40 hours a week every single day.
00:17:20.000 | You're going to have time.
00:17:21.000 | So if you're not working with a paying customer, then you spend your time fixing up your own
00:17:25.000 | RVs and then selling them and flipping them on Craigslist and building up a good investment
00:17:30.040 | portfolio.
00:17:32.080 | Now continuing with the theme of the business being flexible, because you can decide your
00:17:36.880 | own calendar, you have the opportunity and the ability to simultaneously pursue other
00:17:42.780 | businesses and other lines of investment and other lines of business activity while you're
00:17:49.440 | doing this process.
00:17:51.200 | Just because you're fixing up RVs doesn't mean you can't also fix up a car if you come
00:17:54.980 | across it or just because you're fixing RVs doesn't mean you can't also go ahead and fix
00:17:59.560 | up a rental house.
00:18:00.840 | After all, if you were an 18-year-old young man making $100,000 a year living on 20, a
00:18:07.560 | year or two of work and savings, you could flip a bunch of RVs and all of a sudden move
00:18:10.820 | into a different market where you're working with cash and you're doing other projects.
00:18:17.520 | If you keep your expenses low, then this flexible income is great for you because you don't
00:18:21.640 | have to work 40 hours a week.
00:18:23.440 | You can keep your rates high and along the way, while you're keeping your rates high,
00:18:30.440 | you can put all of your time to good use, whether that's in your business hours or in
00:18:35.480 | your investment hours.
00:18:37.480 | You still retain the benefits of the flexibility of your income.
00:18:41.840 | Now the RV business has a few other advantages that you should also look for in whatever
00:18:46.100 | business you're pursuing.
00:18:48.100 | For example, when you're working with people who own RVs, most of the time you're going
00:18:52.060 | to be dealing with a wealthier clientele.
00:18:55.680 | RVs are toys for most people and yes, many people will stretch to buy one.
00:18:59.560 | They can't perfectly afford, but a lot of people who own an RV have significant amounts
00:19:04.640 | of money.
00:19:05.640 | When you're working with people who are wealthier and providing a service that they want, that
00:19:10.400 | can be a good market to work in.
00:19:12.700 | In many ways, it's easier than dealing with say, auto repairs.
00:19:16.520 | If when you're working on lower end cars, you're going to have significant constant
00:19:20.720 | price pressure.
00:19:22.680 | But an RV owner is probably more likely, yes, they want a good deal and they want fair work,
00:19:26.480 | but they want it to be done right.
00:19:28.760 | So that's good in terms of the business model.
00:19:31.280 | You're also working in a business that's largely unregulated.
00:19:34.560 | Whenever possible, I always try to steer completely clear of any industry that is licensed or
00:19:40.100 | extensively regulated and I encourage other people to do that as well.
00:19:43.360 | It's one of the reasons why I was so glad to get out of the financial industry because
00:19:46.840 | the financial industry is hamstrung by just awful constant regulations and licensing and
00:19:51.840 | it's the same in every industry that's licensed.
00:19:54.200 | Whenever you get a group of people together that can force the government through the
00:19:58.280 | power of collective lobbying to impose some kind of licensing scheme, they're doing it
00:20:03.120 | so that they can freeze out the competition.
00:20:05.920 | That's the idea.
00:20:06.920 | Well, freezing out the competition has the effect of making it harder for you to get
00:20:12.280 | in and break into that business.
00:20:15.120 | It also has the effect of wrecking most industries.
00:20:19.520 | So in any industry you're in, you look for the least regulated part of it and you probably
00:20:24.880 | get a better business structure.
00:20:28.240 | Well, I don't know.
00:20:30.640 | Maybe they are.
00:20:31.640 | I haven't done the research, but I'm not aware of any RV mechanic cabal of licensees, which
00:20:39.920 | means you can set up a great business and actually compete in a free market.
00:20:46.640 | Doesn't mean there are no barriers to entry.
00:20:48.000 | Think about the different types of barriers to entry that you may have.
00:20:50.760 | One barrier to entry would be skill and this is the best advantage of the RV industry.
00:20:56.200 | You're dealing with skills that are not common.
00:20:58.880 | Lots of people work on cars.
00:21:00.440 | Lots of people develop the skills to work on cars.
00:21:02.520 | Fewer now than in years past, but still a lot of people work on cars, but not many people
00:21:06.920 | work on RVs and not many RV owners.
00:21:09.880 | Many RV owners do complex repairs to their RVs.
00:21:12.920 | So you've got good protection from other people because of the skill set and your benefit
00:21:19.200 | however is there's not a huge cost, not a lot of overhead to get into the business.
00:21:23.320 | Now compare an RV business with something like a lawn care business.
00:21:27.920 | Lawn care businesses are great.
00:21:29.120 | Lots of people build them and they're very, very flexible, but you have a lot of competition
00:21:32.960 | and so you have intense pressure on prices.
00:21:36.360 | Why do you have a lot of competition?
00:21:37.360 | Well, you have a lot of competition because it doesn't cost all that much to start a
00:21:40.360 | lawn care business.
00:21:41.360 | Any 12-year-old kid with a push lawnmower can start a lawn care business and you don't
00:21:46.640 | have any protection because of skill.
00:21:49.720 | Anybody who cuts their own grass would consider themselves perfectly capable of going and
00:21:53.000 | also cutting the neighbor's grass.
00:21:54.720 | So if you work in an industry like lawn care or like snow shoveling or similar industries,
00:22:00.480 | yes, you can gain wages and income because of the work, but you don't have any protection
00:22:05.040 | from a skill or investment perspective.
00:22:08.880 | So in my example of my son, if my son were in this age group, he wouldn't have a lot
00:22:13.560 | of money so therefore he's not going to go into an industry where there's big financial
00:22:19.120 | barriers to entry.
00:22:21.300 | But we do want to go where there's barriers to entry based upon skill.
00:22:26.880 | That's why you can earn higher money, because of the skill.
00:22:30.880 | Other benefits of the RV business model, very low overhead which means a very low risk.
00:22:36.440 | You're dealing in largely a cash business.
00:22:39.040 | There's low overhead there.
00:22:40.760 | You don't have a huge amount.
00:22:41.760 | You don't have to have a big shop.
00:22:43.040 | You don't have to have a lot of financial risk.
00:22:44.360 | You don't have to go into debt.
00:22:45.360 | You just need a vehicle and some basic tools and equipment.
00:22:48.280 | That's good.
00:22:49.280 | You also have a very movable business.
00:22:55.160 | If the RV market in Florida dries up because the economy tanks, well, guess what?
00:22:59.960 | The RV market in Arizona is probably still pretty good or other places.
00:23:04.780 | You also have diverse skills that can translate over to different things.
00:23:08.460 | Somebody who can fix up RVs is using practically the same technology as somebody who can fix
00:23:13.320 | up boats.
00:23:14.320 | There's a lot of translation between that and somebody who can fix up houses.
00:23:18.300 | So there's a good diversity of skill sets and you can use these skill sets.
00:23:21.520 | Now a few other wrinkles on the RV business that I think bear close focus with regard
00:23:28.200 | to financial freedom.
00:23:31.320 | I've described here the pathway.
00:23:33.640 | Remember, I tell my 15-year-old son, "Hey, why don't you go and apprentice?"
00:23:37.640 | He goes and apprentices for two to three years, let's say from 15 to 18.
00:23:41.760 | While he's finishing up his formal academics, he apprentices for four or five hours a day,
00:23:46.160 | builds the skill set and puts himself on track to buy out the business owner, buys the list,
00:23:53.280 | the customer list, the referrals, buys the phone number, et cetera.
00:23:56.520 | So he has additional sources of business, builds the necessary skills.
00:23:59.560 | At 18 years old, he puts himself in the position just like this RV mechanic that I spoke to,
00:24:04.560 | to earn six figures per year profit on a very simple business that depends upon his input.
00:24:12.240 | Let's say I'm wrong and at 18 it's 80,000, 19 it's 80,000, then at 20 it's 100,000.
00:24:18.360 | For a moment, let's ignore personal expenses because of course I've trained my son, hopefully
00:24:23.320 | we'll find out in a number of years, but I've trained him to live cheap until he's wealthy
00:24:28.480 | and even then to continue living frugally on a comparative basis to his wealth and his
00:24:32.920 | income.
00:24:33.920 | So let's ignore for a moment personal expenses.
00:24:36.160 | He's living at home, minimal expenses and just saving as much as possible.
00:24:41.440 | Will you do the math on $80,000 earned and saved for the course of seven years?
00:24:50.380 | Just do the math.
00:24:51.380 | 80,000 times seven would be $560,000.
00:24:56.380 | Can you think of a bunch of ways for a diligent 25-year-old to build out a good way to invest
00:25:03.960 | $560,000?
00:25:07.960 | I could list dozens and what I would guess is the investment opportunities would grow.
00:25:16.480 | If I were out doing that business at 18, I bet you he could buy an RV a week.
00:25:21.120 | Or an RV every couple of weeks.
00:25:23.040 | Well, you flip $5,000 RVs, you can turn a lot of money pretty quickly.
00:25:27.360 | The biggest challenge becomes when you're flipping cheap RVs and then your capital starts
00:25:33.200 | to outgrow your ability to do a certain level of business.
00:25:37.440 | So you move to more expensive RVs if there are good margins there and you start to flip
00:25:41.000 | those from time to time.
00:25:42.980 | You have the benefit of selling something that people would really like to have.
00:25:46.280 | Having done extensive shopping in the RV marketplace as it stands currently in 2017, the RV marketplace
00:25:52.200 | is hard because it's dominated by either the new market and it's very tough financially
00:25:57.200 | to buy a new RV because they depreciate so fast, or the used market where many of the
00:26:03.960 | units aren't very reliable and they haven't been used.
00:26:07.240 | The problem with buying used RVs is they usually are being sold by an owner who didn't use
00:26:11.480 | it anymore and they sit.
00:26:12.720 | And RVs sit just like boats, everything falls apart just like cars.
00:26:16.520 | Everything falls apart and they become very dangerous to own.
00:26:20.760 | So the best type of RV to buy from a financial perspective is one that has everything working,
00:26:25.880 | that's been worked on by a good mechanic, but that's not brand new.
00:26:29.000 | It depreciates less but you have the confidence of it being functional.
00:26:32.600 | So I think somebody who is skilled and used their time when they weren't working for paying
00:26:36.260 | clients to fix up their own RVs and flip them, I think could make a lot of money in something
00:26:40.320 | like this.
00:26:41.320 | And again, because of the flexibility of the RV business, they could continue to work in
00:26:46.520 | something like fixing up old houses and starting to accumulate some rental houses.
00:26:51.400 | So you do the math.
00:26:52.400 | Let's say with a $500,000 investment portfolio, slowly invest it, just buy one house a year
00:26:56.840 | from 20 to 25, somebody owns five rental houses.
00:27:02.080 | I would call that financially independent.
00:27:05.720 | Even at a time when many of their age group competitors are just coming out of school,
00:27:12.640 | saddled with student loan debt, getting entry-level jobs, which is what many people do when they
00:27:19.720 | go through just a standard four-year career and it takes them a few years to find themselves.
00:27:25.240 | I think our enterprising young adult would be in a pretty good situation.
00:27:32.880 | But a few other bonus ideas of the RV lifestyle.
00:27:36.080 | Remember this.
00:27:37.080 | There are RVs all over the place and there are RV owners who would like to have their
00:27:44.720 | work done on their RVs all over the place.
00:27:48.600 | And many people, one of the reasons they pursue something like financial independence is so
00:27:54.880 | they can do things like travel the country in an RV.
00:27:59.880 | Here's what I would do.
00:28:01.120 | If I had the desire to travel the country in an RV, I would do it.
00:28:08.120 | What I would do is I would put a small little magnetic sign on the side of my tow vehicle
00:28:12.920 | for towing my RV and I would do mobile RV mechanic work while I'm on the road.
00:28:20.520 | Every place that you are in a campground, you have a whole bunch of potential customers.
00:28:25.800 | Certainly, you're not going to be working every day but there are a bunch of people
00:28:29.640 | in a campground who if they saw somebody with a sign that said mobile RV mechanic, 10 years
00:28:37.040 | experience and that doesn't perfectly fit into the young man model here.
00:28:42.360 | I'm thinking about somebody with more experience and more age.
00:28:45.300 | They would be happy to say, "Hey, listen.
00:28:46.480 | I've got this problem.
00:28:47.480 | Do you think you could help me fix my water heater?
00:28:48.760 | Do you think you could help me figure out what's going on with my roof?
00:28:52.040 | Or do you think you have the time to help me diagnose my electrical problem?"
00:28:56.080 | A lot of these problems that we have on RVs are things that are not permanent.
00:29:00.040 | They don't mean you can't use it at all.
00:29:02.280 | They're just annoying little obnoxious repairs that I need to get around to it sometime.
00:29:07.520 | But somebody could make some money in a campground.
00:29:10.840 | Here's one to go at one better.
00:29:13.320 | I see no reason why a career like this couldn't be connected to other opportunities in the
00:29:20.120 | RV business.
00:29:21.880 | If you live in an RV, one of the things that many people who want to travel long-term in
00:29:25.440 | an RV will do is they'll take a job working as a campground host.
00:29:29.480 | Now frequently, campground hosts are seemingly wealthy people in their 60s, usually a couple,
00:29:36.560 | usually have a big old fifth-wheel trailer and a couple of dogs and kennels and things
00:29:40.560 | like that.
00:29:41.560 | The task of a campground host is to go and welcome everybody, help in some parks.
00:29:48.080 | They help with assigning a certain site to people who come in and they often will do
00:29:54.560 | things like clean the bathrooms.
00:29:55.880 | It requires usually perhaps a few hours a day of work, maybe three.
00:30:00.800 | It depends on the host, depends on the campground, depends on a bunch of different factors.
00:30:06.200 | They do some minor cleanup at a campground as well.
00:30:08.800 | But what they get in exchange for that is free rent, free lot rent.
00:30:11.520 | So they have a place to park their RV where they're not paying nightly campground fees
00:30:15.400 | and then depending again on the park, they'll get the amenities of that park.
00:30:18.840 | That might be an electrical connection for their RV.
00:30:22.660 | It might be full hookups, which would mean electrical connection, water connection, a
00:30:26.680 | sewer drain set up for their RV and cable TV and also internet.
00:30:31.040 | So somebody who has an RV, if they live and work as a camp host, could put themselves
00:30:36.360 | in a situation where their only living expenses are personal food and they're working off
00:30:42.880 | their rent, their utilities, etc. from their camp hosting duties.
00:30:49.280 | I also don't see any reason why if somebody had skill as an RV mechanic, they couldn't
00:30:55.600 | put up maybe a smaller sign and indicate that they also work on RVs in their off time.
00:31:03.080 | I can't imagine, although I've never seen anyone do it, but I can't imagine as long
00:31:06.240 | as you were low key about it, why you wouldn't be able to have your personal customers to
00:31:13.040 | work on their RVs in the afternoon.
00:31:16.200 | So now we've put ourselves in a situation where you've got free rent in exchange for
00:31:20.840 | your few hours a day of work as a campground host.
00:31:23.480 | As a campground host, you are often connecting with many of the campers.
00:31:29.920 | Some campgrounds, it's every camper.
00:31:32.600 | Other campgrounds, it's more of if you need us, we're here.
00:31:35.640 | Depends on the setup.
00:31:38.520 | And you've got a side business that you can do on the road wherever you go and earn a
00:31:42.520 | good hourly wage.
00:31:44.440 | If you did it that way, you wouldn't even need the seven years of hard work and the
00:31:49.920 | half a million dollars.
00:31:51.820 | You just need the skill with RVing, with working on RVs.
00:31:57.440 | You need a rig to live in and the will to make it work.
00:32:02.440 | And you've built yourself a career that can go on the road.
00:32:05.000 | That's not dependent on an internet connection.
00:32:06.680 | That's not dependent on you being the next big blogger.
00:32:11.120 | It's actually a highly skilled industry and a real service.
00:32:16.120 | Now that idea of building an industry or building a business and a skill set around the place
00:32:22.100 | that you want to live in your dream retirement is common.
00:32:25.800 | That's common in the cruising circles where if you're a diesel mechanic or if you are
00:32:30.680 | a sail maker or sail repairer or if you know how to work on boats, then you can go and
00:32:35.320 | you pull into a marina and you advertise your services.
00:32:37.800 | If you're the teak guy or you're the underwater barnacle scraping crew, you can figure out
00:32:44.160 | how to earn your living while you're in that marina living the lifestyle with the other
00:32:48.680 | cruisers.
00:32:49.680 | Many people do that.
00:32:50.680 | This is just taking that idea and bringing it over to dry land.
00:32:53.600 | I think for a lot of people, the barriers to entry, doing it on dry land are a lot lower
00:32:58.160 | than they are in the marina environment.
00:33:01.720 | One final advantage I forgot to mention of the RV mechanic lifestyle, especially given
00:33:08.560 | that flexibility of business.
00:33:12.540 | We often underestimate how valuable it is to have control of your time and flexibility
00:33:19.800 | in your location.
00:33:21.280 | Again, by this I mean if I were scheduling work, let's say that I could figure it out
00:33:26.440 | that I could fit in two or three customers a day.
00:33:29.160 | Average repair may be two hours, two to three hours.
00:33:32.160 | I could fit two to three customers a day in and then there's time for me to travel between
00:33:36.280 | them but I've got flexibility here.
00:33:40.040 | I can adjust my customers and fit an extra hour in the day or if I know I'm going to
00:33:43.920 | be up in the north of the county or the south of the county, then I've got the flexibility
00:33:47.640 | and the ability to go places because I'm out and about and I've got some control over my
00:33:51.240 | schedule.
00:33:52.360 | That allows me to save a lot of money on the other stuff that's associated with life.
00:33:58.640 | One of the reasons why people work a job, people work a job, get sunk every which way.
00:34:04.760 | You get the worst tax code, unlike a business owner and our friendly mobile RV mechanic
00:34:10.480 | has his vehicle as a deductible expense.
00:34:14.880 | Certainly of course only his business miles but come on, when you're an RV mechanic, the
00:34:19.640 | vast majority of your miles are business miles.
00:34:21.840 | His cell phone is a deductible business expense.
00:34:25.280 | His gasoline – there are other – basically a lot of his personal expenses become business
00:34:31.760 | expenses and he has a huge advantage in this context over somebody who's an office worker.
00:34:36.800 | An office worker who's working a standard salaried job of course doesn't have a deductible
00:34:41.560 | car expense.
00:34:42.560 | They don't have a deductible cell phone expense.
00:34:43.840 | They don't have any deductible expenses because they're a salary worker.
00:34:47.600 | The only deductible expense that you get when you're a salaried employee is you get a
00:34:51.040 | 401(k) maybe.
00:34:52.040 | Of course our business owner can set that up for himself anyway.
00:34:55.800 | But the other benefit is you get the flexibility to be able to go after deals and save money
00:35:00.000 | on things.
00:35:01.860 | If you need a new washer, washing machine or if you need a new appliance or a new piece
00:35:07.200 | of furniture, you can hang out on Craigslist and you can watch for something to be posted
00:35:11.280 | that's inexpensive and then you can react quickly and go and pick it up.
00:35:15.980 | But if you're working at a job, let's say that you are a medical office clerk and
00:35:22.680 | your job is to be there at the dentist's office welcoming the clients and taking care
00:35:28.240 | of the medical billing and making sure that everyone is squared away.
00:35:30.880 | Well, if you need a new washing machine, the only time that you have available is Saturday
00:35:34.200 | morning and there's a lot of competition on Craigslist on Saturday morning.
00:35:38.120 | And so thus if you need a new washing machine, you're going to be much more likely to go
00:35:41.440 | down to the local appliance store and pay full retail for a washing machine.
00:35:46.400 | Well, $650 versus a hundred bucks or maybe you pick it up for free because it doesn't
00:35:52.240 | work and then you got a little bit of time to fix it.
00:35:55.200 | Those things added up make a big, big difference.
00:36:00.100 | So if you can build a career or a business or a lifestyle that keeps your flexibility
00:36:04.920 | with your time, it's not that you won't work.
00:36:08.000 | You're going to work.
00:36:09.000 | I work a lot.
00:36:10.000 | But it's that you can work with a little bit of flexibility.
00:36:14.360 | You can choose when you work to a degree.
00:36:18.480 | You aren't telling me exactly the time of day that I have to record my podcast.
00:36:23.080 | And because I'm not accountable to you in that way, that means that if I want to record
00:36:28.280 | it first thing in the morning or if I want to record it late in the evening, I can assign
00:36:33.560 | and allocate the hours of my day as I like.
00:36:37.080 | That frees up time for me to do things that help to save money.
00:36:43.440 | This is why the dual income household with two wage-earning, salary-earning jobs is the
00:36:53.680 | most awful way to design an income stream from the perspective of financial freedom.
00:37:01.640 | It's the absolutely best way to design an income stream if you're trying to maximize
00:37:06.580 | tax revenue to the US federal government or to your country of residence.
00:37:12.000 | It's the absolute best way to lower wages if you are in charge of massive corporations
00:37:19.280 | and you want the lowest possible per capita wage.
00:37:24.360 | Well, take everybody out of the house.
00:37:27.280 | Put everybody into salary jobs.
00:37:30.640 | Their taxes are going to be carefully tracked by their employer, the big companies.
00:37:36.560 | We can threaten big companies.
00:37:38.560 | Going a little bit into tax evasion world here but this is the destruction of it.
00:37:47.840 | The guy – when I paid for my RV, I always prefer to do business in the free market whenever
00:37:52.360 | I can to encourage the free market.
00:37:55.160 | When the guy worked for me and he fixed a couple of things on my RV, he didn't give
00:37:59.320 | me an invoice and I didn't give him a credit card.
00:38:04.400 | I handed him little stacks of green bills.
00:38:08.280 | Now what he does, that is up to him.
00:38:11.240 | But there's a pretty good chance that that money went right into his pocket and it's
00:38:16.360 | not going on a tax return to Uncle Sam.
00:38:20.320 | And there's a pretty good chance that a high proportion of that guy's clients do exactly
00:38:24.900 | the same thing.
00:38:27.880 | That's standard operating procedure in the world of small business.
00:38:32.360 | But that's not standard operating procedure in the world of salaried employees, which
00:38:39.080 | is why people are encouraged – get a big – one of the reasons and I'm not trying
00:38:43.560 | to say it's conspiratorial.
00:38:44.560 | I'm saying it's practical.
00:38:46.960 | When everybody gets a big job, you're locked into a world of paying retail for all of your
00:38:52.240 | expenses and earning in the highest tax system possible.
00:38:56.840 | It's a very inefficient way to set up your life.
00:39:02.400 | Much, much better to set up at least one of your family's income streams.
00:39:07.620 | If you can't handle all of them, make sure at least one of them is set up to take advantage
00:39:11.240 | of the business tax code.
00:39:13.040 | You have a deductibility of expenses that are related to business income and the ability
00:39:19.140 | to be flexible on when you go and pick stuff up for cheap on Craigslist and then have the
00:39:28.720 | time to fix it up, have the time to use it.
00:39:31.720 | If you found a deal on a couple thousand board feet of boards that somebody was getting rid
00:39:38.040 | of and you go and pick them up because you're on your way to a job and you're out and
00:39:41.760 | about and you're not stuck behind the dentist's desk answering phones, you can go pick up
00:39:47.600 | those couple thousand feet of cheap or free boards and then use them to make your floor.
00:39:53.840 | You saved yourself $10,000 instead of going down to Home Depot on the weekend and buying
00:39:57.800 | all of the fresh off the rack laminate flooring with all of the associated sales tax and paying
00:40:06.180 | for everyone's health insurance.
00:40:07.720 | So there's a little just of a mini discussion on the power of flexibility with a job like
00:40:14.400 | this.
00:40:15.400 | I hope that you can see the principles.
00:40:17.760 | The principles are to increase income and in this case, you increase income by going
00:40:21.800 | into a skilled trade that's in demand.
00:40:25.840 | And if you have children, you had better make sure that you're carefully analyzing your
00:40:32.720 | children's inclination and personal skill sets because there is a huge opportunity available
00:40:38.480 | in the skilled trades right now.
00:40:40.080 | If you're a plumber, if you're an electrician, if you're an air conditioning contractor and
00:40:45.640 | many, many other aspects of that, you can charge a very high hourly rate and young people,
00:40:53.320 | young men and women are walking away from these trades because they involve hard work.
00:40:59.620 | So you go into a trade that earns you a high income because of your differentiation with
00:41:06.440 | skills.
00:41:07.440 | You keep your expenses low while you're accumulating investment capital and then you invest close
00:41:14.360 | to you.
00:41:15.360 | You invest in what you know.
00:41:17.080 | The RV marketplace is an incredibly inefficient market and it's a market that you can manipulate.
00:41:22.680 | You can shine up a trailer and sell it.
00:41:24.440 | You can take advantage of the things that your customer is looking for.
00:41:27.320 | They're looking for an RV where everything works and you can certify that everything
00:41:31.200 | works.
00:41:32.200 | You may choose to offer your own little mini warranty on the RVs that you sell.
00:41:35.360 | That'd be valuable to me.
00:41:38.240 | And then you optimize your lifestyle.
00:41:40.260 | You build a business around something that keeps your freedom with your time, your freedom
00:41:44.620 | with your location, even your freedom to pursue other businesses along the way.
00:41:49.360 | You may have a real estate license and sell some real estate here and there while you're
00:41:52.840 | doing your RV work.
00:41:54.260 | You may have a car dealer's license and you go down to the auctions and buy a car cheap
00:41:58.280 | and sell a few cars here and there.
00:42:00.960 | You may have dozens of lines of income.
00:42:04.160 | But you can build resilience, you can build flexibility, and you can achieve financial
00:42:08.840 | freedom in 10 years or less.
00:42:10.960 | It's not a pipe dream, but does require your careful analysis and your being willing to
00:42:17.960 | go against the grain and think about what your skills are, what your opportunities are,
00:42:22.480 | and then take the ideas I've presented here and adjust them to your situation.
00:42:25.760 | Thank you for listening.
00:42:27.480 | Bye.
00:42:28.480 | Bye.
00:42:29.480 | Bye.
00:42:30.480 | Bye.
00:42:31.480 | Bye.
00:42:32.480 | Bye.
00:42:33.480 | Bye.
00:42:34.480 | Bye.
00:42:35.480 | Bye.
00:42:36.480 | Bye.
00:42:37.480 | Bye.
00:42:38.480 | This show is part of the Radical Life Media network of podcasts and resources.
00:42:43.720 | Find out more at RadicalLifeMedia.com.
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