Nomadic Couple Starts Vintage Camper Rental Biz

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

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In this story, a couple combines their love for travel and vintage campers into a unique rental experience. They do this in part by using services like Airbnb and Outdoorsy. Now, I'm sure you've heard of Airbnb, but are you familiar with Outdoorsy? It's a platform specifically for travelers who are seeking RV rentals or camper rentals, anything like that, and their promise to those travelers is to help them experience the magic of the outdoors with the best RV, camper van, and travel trailer rentals imaginable. Now, naturally, their promise to aspiring side hustlers is to help you make money.

That's what we talk about here on the podcast. In fact, they promise over $50,000 a year. That's pretty cool. It's right on their homepage with full renter verification and vehicle insurance options. So a new platform there, or at least one that I haven't talked about here on the podcast, I'm pretty sure.

The story is called "Nomatic Couple Starts Vintage Camper Rental Biz." My name is Chris Guillebeau. I'm your host of "Side Hustle School." So excited to bring you this program every day. And today's story is coming up in just 30 seconds. [Music]

The spark for Britton Kovach and Josh Shucman's "Side Hustle" was a Pepto Bismol pink camper van in the backyard of a tiny home outside Nashville, Tennessee. Britton had taken her mom to a taping of the Dave Ramsey show and was sleeping in the van as part of the Airbnb she'd booked.

After getting to know the host who ran the accommodation, Britton was inspired to do the same. She'd always dreamed of owning her own hostel. And the Airbnb business model showed her she was sitting on a golden opportunity. She had a 900 square foot loft apartment in Kansas City that could sleep up to five people. She bought some more beds and linens and posted her new listing online.

The first booking came within a week and running the place was manageable around her job as an event manager for Harley Davidson. For the next four years, Britton ran the hostel together with Josh who also became her husband. They welcomed over 900 guests and earned more than $40,000. They then set the hostel up to be self-sufficient and went to live on the road in a 1988 Airstream camper. It was a great experience, but also presented a problem.

They missed the community of hostel living, but weren't ready to give up their new nomadic lifestyle. And that's when a fortuitous trip to Germany gave them a new idea. Attending a conference in Bonn, the pair stated a hostel. And this hostel was in a warehouse filled with trains and camper vans and cars that you could rent to stay in. It reminded Britt of the Pepto Bismol camper from those years earlier in Nashville.

And it gave her an idea. What if they could combine their love of campers and the open road with their dream of owning and letting out accommodation? She even had a name for it. They would call it Out of Normal Properties. Britton and Josh started by renting out a single Airstream trailer on a plot of Britton's parents' land to see if the model would work.

Once again, in the space of a week, they had their first booking, then another, and another until they'd earned $1,400 from these rentals. The model had potential, but also some drawbacks. Namely, if they continued to travel, they needed to pay someone to check the Airstream and clean it between states. But by using Instagram, Britton and Josh were able to find a good solution. They posted an update saying they were looking for land to rent to put their camper on.

And they got a response from a motel and campground in Tucson, Arizona. They offered to give Britton and Josh a small plot of dirt, access to all their amenities, and they would clean and turn over the beds between each guest. Not just as an act of kindness, of course, but for a 50% split on the bookings. Britton and Josh agreed. This arrangement went on for two winters, summers being too hot for vintage camper rentals in the desert, and the camper generated around $4,500 for what was essentially hands-off work.

It allowed them to keep working their full-time jobs and travel. But of course, when 2020 rolled around, the COVID-19 pandemic had other ideas. Britton learned that all the marketing events she'd been planning for her day job were canceled for the rest of the year. After a few days of panic, she decided it was time to go all in on what they'd been building the last few years. It started with a trip to Montana that they'd been thinking about for a while.

Once they got there, they decided this is where they wanted to settle down, at least for the foreseeable future. They sold a Kansas City apartment turned hostel and looked for new opportunities, where they soon became managing partners of Flathead Lake Resort, based on the experience they'd been building up since 2014. They also purchased two more Airstream camper vans, an investment of around $37,000 to use on the property. Britton and Josh measure the success of their side hostels in businesses based on the ROI, and they aim to make a consistent 30% every year. For example, that first Airstream rental brought in $11,000 in one summer.

They also recently bought a 2005 Honda Pilot and started renting it out. It brought in more than $5,000 over the past few months. Looking to the future, the pair have just closed on a half acre of land with access to the Flathead Lake Resort for tents and camper vans. Their plan is to own a full on, full service camper hostel. [Music]

If you'd like to check out Britton and Josh's website, just go to outofnorm.al, which is a pretty cool website.

It's not actually from Albania. I think it's out of normal, like outofnorm.al. There are a couple of other websites linked up there. You can learn more about them, about their work and so on. Of course, Outdoorsy is a platform.

I mentioned the introduction of this episode. So you can find an app for that, I believe in the app store or the Google store, or you can also go to outdoorsy.com. Of course, we're gonna link up all those things and more in today's show notes. That page is sidehustleschool.com/17511751. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better.

Hope you enjoy these stories. I hope they get you thinking. And I hope that you, of course, will take action on your ideas. That's it for today. Do come back tomorrow.

You can subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]