Like There's No Tomorrow: The Full-Time RV Freedom Podcast

From Job Loss to Financial Freedom: Remote Career Options for Full-Time RVers

• Barry & Darlene Nicholson • Season 1 • Episode 3

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When Darlene unexpectedly lost her digital marketing job while full-time RVing, it threatened to derail our nomadic lifestyle. In this candid episode, we reveal how this crisis became an opportunity to reimagine work on the road. We share practical remote career options beyond typical workamping gigs—from traditional 9-to-5 jobs and freelancing on platforms like Upwork to non-digital careers including RV inspection and mobile tech repair that can earn $100-150/hour. Whether you're an aspiring full-timer worried about income stability or a current RVer needing to replace lost employment, this episode provides actionable strategies for funding your adventures without sacrificing freedom. Plus, we explore how boondocking saved us thousands when our income was cut in half. Don't let financial fears keep you from hitting the road—there are more remote work opportunities than ever before!

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Hosted by Barry & Darlene Nicholson
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Speaker:

Half of our income is gone. So what does this mean? Do we stay on the road? Do we have to come off the road?

Speaker 3:

Welcome to like There's No Tomorrow, your Guide to Full-Time RV Freedom. I'm Barry Nicholson and with my wife Darlene. We're bringing you real conversations about life on the road. Whether you're dreaming of RB living, we're already exploring alongside us. Join our community as we travel this beautiful country, like there's no tomorrow.

Speaker:

So something big just happened to us, and to be honest guys, it's a little uncomfortable for me to talk about. It's not something I think a lot of people go broadcast, but I got let go from my job painful but true. Half of our income is gone. So what does this mean? Do we stay on the road? Do we have to come off the road? Today's video is gonna be about that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. We're gonna talk about, exactly what happened and what our plan is gonna be moving forward. And we just wanna let you know that if you are in in a similar position, like if you are on the road already and you lost your job, or if you're thinking about going on the road and you're just concerned about how do I, keep some money coming in? We're gonna give you some ideas'cause we've been down this road before. We're not super freaked out about it. So we do have some good stuff to share with you. So in case you're new to the channel, we are Barry and Darlene. Nicholson. Our channel is called like there's no tomorrow. And I guess back, I don't know how long has it been?

Speaker:

About 19 months.

Speaker 2:

19 months ago we hit the road full time. Our kids had both left the house. We became empty nesters. We lived in Florida for many years. And we just decided to buy an RV and start traveling around the country. But we also both needed full-time jobs. We both had full-time jobs at the time. And so what we do for a living and have done for, gosh, almost 20 years is digital marketing. We do a lot of stuff that revolves around writing, copy, writing sales and advertising copy. It's how we got our start. And then we eventually got into, developing websites, doing I do a lot of Facebook and Google advertising management writing emails, writing promotions and stuff for various companies. Now, what we are gonna cover in today's video are some things we hope that are gonna be most helpful to you, which is, how do I find work? Either traditional nine to five online jobs or freelance work. Or, and some, either some, also some jobs that are not online,

Speaker:

right? Because some of you guys need to work full time like us. We have bills to pay. We have a kid in college, we have expenses. We're not retired. But some of you have a hybrid desire. We have a dog.

Speaker 2:

It's really thirsty. He,

Speaker:

every time we shoot a video, he drinks. Do y'all notice this? I notice it when I'm editing anyways there will also be some options that are a little bit more when you wanna work options as well. So there's a little bit of something for everybody in this and there's also gonna be some things that are not digital, that are jobs you can do physically as you travel in your rv. So I really hope you stay tuned and check this out'cause we're bringing you a lot of good info. So I'm not gonna lie, losing my job sucked mainly because. I didn't see it quite coming. I was already looking for a new job. I saw the signs that the company I was with was possibly having some money problems. The industry was struggling a little bit. I could see the writing on the wall, so to say, and I had started looking, but I hadn't really taken any action. I thought I had more time. So when I was let go, it was a little bit of a shock, and in the end I went through the gamut of emotion of like. Being like shocked and then being like totally pissed and then being like, this is a great opportunity.

Speaker 2:

Just for the first time in a long time, I actually feel in control.

Speaker:

And that's where I was like, okay, I can sit back and I can go, what do I want to do? Because we already made this move to full-time RV living. We already made that leap to. To live a life that we really want for us, not is dictated by anybody else, but what we wanna get achieve and what we wanna do. So I thought, I need to look at my job the same way I have a choice. I can go back and find a very similar job working full-time, nine to five hours benefits remotely and just keep doing what we're doing. And that was definitely was an option. And I started looking, but I tell you what guys, I don't know, it's something about being, 52 and competing against all these people and looking, I don't know, I was starting to get really frustrated, so I was like, what do you want, Darlene? What do you wanna do? And we had just started this channel and thank you to everyone who's been tuning in because we have been overwhelmed with, we didn't think anybody would watch. We thought our family would maybe watch. So you guys have been reaching out and really been complimentary of of the content we're putting out. And I started thinking, man. I would love to do more of that. We would love to focus on that a little bit more. And see where this thing goes.'cause we started this in a way to build community, find our people, share what we had learned.'cause we didn't know anything when we got started RVing. Yeah, so I started thinking full-time, regular job, which doesn't leave me a lot of time to do all this stuff or. I could go freelance again. I used to be, we used to be freelancers for many years, so doing our digital marketing. As a freelancer for hire. So different companies would just come to us and hire us for a project or on a retainer monthly or things like that. So I decided to go the freelance route. And there are a lot of opportunities in freelancing, but if you really desire that nine to five, that stability in a paycheck, you can do that too. But you do have a choice if you're gonna go remote. Then I would start, if you desire the full-time, regular job, go on Indeed, go on LinkedIn. And if you just type in remote when you do your search. So if you're an accountant or bookkeeper to put bookkeeper remote if you are customer service remote and you're gonna pull up. A lot of jobs. The thing about Indeed and LinkedIn is you gotta be there, you gotta be fast, you gotta get it. But the remote jobs are out there. Guys, my company was a hundred percent remote. They built their business around it. So there's a lot of businesses out there that employ a hundred percent remote. Staff. So don't think that whatever you're doing right now, if it's a traditional job that you can't find that in a remote way. You don't have to stick with your same job doing the same thing. You can find it in another place and it may be just a better setup for you. So the traditional route can be done remotely.

Speaker 2:

Okay, so let's talk about freelancing. We actually freelanced for quite a while. Whenever we first started back in 2006. It wasn't until even the last six or seven years where we had like more traditional nine to five jobs, even though they were remote. So we know a lot about freelancing and where we got our started basically was Upwork. Now you've maybe seen Upwork is really pretty well known these days. I've seen them advertise a lot, like on on YouTube. I think they might even up. Advertised in the Super Bowl. I don't know.

Speaker:

Yeah, it was, they're pretty popular.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Yeah. You can go on there. It's free to start an account. The way that it works is essentially is if you have a certain skillset I mean there are a lot of. Digital marketing types of jobs on there, or projects that you can essentially bid for. But then there are also people that are just looking for straight up, long-term contracts. Maybe they're, maybe they wanna hire somebody full-time. I actually, the company that I work for, we do wanna find somebody to, to hire full-time. That's, that is a specialty thing that there's not a lot of people that do it. But we don't wanna hire them as a freelancer. We actually wanna hire them as a full-time gig, but we knew that we could probably find them on Upwork faster than any other method.

Speaker:

So I wanted to take a second and show you what is all available to you as a freelancer on Upwork. Now I'm gonna show you this view. This is the view where if I was looking for. People to hire. This is what you would see. And I'm doing this just so you can see the categories.'cause if I go into the backend as a freelancer, it's only gonna show my categories. And I want you to see how diverse the jobs are on here. So you can see here web, mobile software development. Obviously this is a very specific type of skillset. But then there's other things that are a lot more general. So there's AI services. If you know anything about ai. There are a lot of stuff, a lot of people looking for help with ai. And then design and creative, if you have any kind of graphic designability, even if it's Canva, something you're using to, there's a lot of people that need just basic. Post design created. That's an excellent side gig right there. Any kind of writing, whether it's sales writing or content writing, blog writing, anything like that's available. Sales and marketing. But if you hit more ba, translation, administrative support, even down to like more detailed engineering, architecture, accounting it, but there's customer service data, people who collect data like. This is a big one. We've hired people to go online and look up email addresses, phone numbers, names of certain types of businesses. So don't rule yourself out as someone who could use something like this for Upwork. But I do wanna show you what it looks like on the freelancer end. And of course this is gonna be all jobs for me, relative to what I do because when you sign up and it's free and Upwork as a freelancer, you put in all of your skillset and it's gonna only show you opportunities and jobs and gigs. We call them gigs. Like it might be one off projects where. It pertains to you and your skills. Yeah, so it's showing me basically everything that's the best match for me. I can do. Most recent, I can do US based companies only, and you can basically see people who are looking for someone. Someone needs a conversion copywriter, they're on paying 10 to$55 an hour. This is how much they need, so some of this is ongoing. Like we said, you can do one-off projects, you can work as much or as little as you want, and sometimes these gigs can lead to full-time jobs. So if this is something that appeals for you to you, I would just go on Upwork and take a look around because there is a lot available to you there.

Speaker 2:

Real quick, before we go any further, please like, and subscribe to our channel. Like we just said, this is becoming a much more important thing in our life right now. So we would love to have more subscribers and please. Leave a comment. Let us know what's going on in your life with your work life. If you're looking for a job, what, whatever it is. Just let's have a conversation. We read all the comments. And I would love to hear from you.

Speaker:

Here's one that I think is known, but I didn't, I don't, I didn't really know how varied it could be, which is online teaching. During the pandemic, a lot of people went to teaching online'cause they weren't working at the time, but it stuck. So there is a lot, there's a lot of people teaching tutoring. Language, I don't know how many people I know and their kid needed more help with their language in school. And you can, if you have that skill, if you speak Spanish and English, and that's something you can offer that may be a side gig that you could add to your income and then like voice lessons or music lessons, if you play an instrument and you have that skill and you can teach online, today's technology makes it amazing. To where you can teach from anywhere. I know I watched a video of an RV or, and she taught HARP, who teaches harp, but she right from her RV and they had like, had a whole setup and she had a whole slew of students. So you know, if you have a skill like that, fitness and nutritional coaching, we had met several. Nutritional coaches that RV and do their work from the road. So if you have a passion for those things, there are certifications you can get. A lot of times they're not that expensive and sometimes they even have ways of feeding you new clients. Get out there and look because there are opportunities if you have a heart for teaching or if you have a certain skillset that you can use that to create an income stream.

Speaker 2:

Okay, so let's talk about some of the non-digital stuff that you can do on the road. Now, a big one of course, would be to be an RV inspector. If you are a mechanically inclined person, and if you're like, especially like nitpicky, you could be a great inspector. We, and inspectors are very much needed thing in this industry. When we first started RVing, we hired an inspector to inspect. This rv.

Speaker:

Yep. We did. Even though it was brand new, we hired someone because that's what you should be doing to make sure you're not getting screwed.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Yeah. We didn't think we were gonna get screwed, but we did, we wanted to make sure, because RVs are known for, they even leave the factory. They're not a hundred percent right. And so this inspector. But I could tell that he was actually, he was an RVR himself. Because when you went to his schedule to book, he basically had blacked out certain dates that I'm not available, or I'm gonna be in this area at this time. And I think you went to a website to find him. Yeah.

Speaker:

Yeah. I'll have to put it on the screen. I don't remember it right now, but there was a definite an inspector website that they're certified and so you can make sure you're getting someone skilled to be your inspector. So that is a great job for a lot of people. Some of you guys we've met on the road are so knowledgeable and this would be a great way for you to get certified and. And be an inspector or a repairman.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. That's another huge thing, a

Speaker:

repair person, I should say. Ladies, you can do it too. We

Speaker 2:

have, we have talked about this in a lot of other videos, but we are huge fans of the mobile tech industry. We think that it's really answered a big problem in the industry, which is of, anytime something's wrong with your rv, which happens a lot that you would be, want to take it to a event or a to a, dealer,'cause we've noticed that there's a big problem in this industry with people when something goes wrong with their rv, they want to take it to a dealer. And that's the last place that we would want to take our rv.

Speaker:

Especially as full-timers.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. We can't just take our house over to your lot and just wait for you to fix it and take a month. It's not gonna happen. Whereas with mobile techs, they show up onsite and yes. They make, they charge anywhere from a hundred to$150 an hour. Now, I hope that appealed to you, because you're thinking yes, you get to put that money in your pocket you're self-employed and RVs are all over the place. Yeah. So there's always a need pretty much anywhere to find a mobile tech. So if,

Speaker:

if you were a mobile tech and you just parked yourself in the middle court site in the winter, dude. You'd be booked the whole time, guaranteed.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely.'cause there's probably not a single person at any RV park that doesn't have something that needs to be fixed on their rv. Yeah. And they just don't have the knowledge or the inclination to do it themselves. Yeah. And if they just knew that you were there. That you could fix it and that you could, yeah. You could take care of their problem, they would hire you. Yeah.

Speaker:

And there are programs out there, the N-R-V-T-A has certification programs and they are excellent. You can go there and get your, do all the classes. I think they do'em, I don't know if it's a week or two week, I'm not really sure, but you can go and get certified and then you'll be in their database too.

Speaker 2:

Yeah and I do have to say, I have, actually, knowing what I knew about the N-R-V-T-A. I was trying to find,'cause they also teach people inspe or they teach people on how to do solar installs. And so I trusted the N-R-V-T-A to send me a solar installer that was gonna know what he was doing. And that's exactly what happened. I ended up going there and we worked it out to where I found somebody that was in the Phoenix area at the time. And Paul did the install. In fact, it was him and another guy that I think were N-R-V-T-A certified and they knocked it out in two or so days and they did a fantastic job. In fact, I still stay in touch with them. Just a great organization and that's doing a really needed thing in this industry. Yeah. Now there's another one that I think, it may be lesser known, but I am super impressed with them, and that is clean tank. If you haven't watched em, a clean tank now that's Clean Tank. It's K-L-E-E-N tank. And if you haven't watched any of their videos, they were the ones that opened my eyes to what it really take takes to keep gray tanks and black tanks clean. And that's basically what they do. They're a. A franchise, for lack of a better word, or a license or something like that. So they, basically if you want you don't work for them. You basically use their methodologies and their teaching and everything. So if you're interested in being a clean tank person that goes around and cleans people's grays, gray and black tanks you, and you use their branding. You have to pay like a licensing fee or something like that, and that you get all the training. They I don't know if they provide you with special equipment or what they do. We actually went to an alliance rally this has been six, eight months ago. And the Clean Tank guys were gonna be there and they would announce ahead of time, Hey, why are you guys are at the rally? So

Speaker:

basically they had all their business pre-booked. And then people were trying to get in while they were there too. So I think he was doing'em back to back. Like,

Speaker 2:

yeah, he was all day, every day. He was super busy. It's like, while everybody was going off and going to the seminars and all that stuff, he was just working. And I, how much did we pay?

Speaker:

Oh, a

Speaker 2:

hundred. 150 bucks. I

Speaker:

wanna say it was around there. I'm not, yeah, something like that. Remember something like that.

Speaker 2:

And he was knocking him out in about 30 to 45 minutes. Yeah. And I talked to him afterwards and I'm like do you stay pretty booked? He's like, dude, you have no idea. And it was just, and a lot of it was those rallies.

Speaker:

Yeah,

Speaker 2:

they would get booked at these rallies and he said, we've got these rallies booked for literally for months. And, but you think about that type of situation, that means that he's probably making a huge amount of money in one week.

Speaker:

And then probably enjoying the time in between the rallies. Yeah. He's off doing what I would like to be doing,

Speaker 2:

going off and fishing, the rest of the time.

Speaker:

Yeah. So that's a great option. If you are someone who you, digital work is not gonna be your thing, but you're handy and you can maybe learn a skill or invest in this clean tank thing or become an in NRA TA repairman or inspector. That could be a great source of income for you and your family. Okay, this is one that I came across that I didn't know existed, but I think some of you guys will really benefit from knowing this. So there are some websites, and I'll tell you what they're TaskRabbit, Thumbtack and Air Tasker, and I'll put those on the screen. But they are if you're it's like someone will go there and say, I need somebody. I'm in Louisville and I need somebody to help me paint. And they'll hire x per dollars per hour. You could accept that job and say, yes, I can do that, and you arrange it and then they'll pay you through the site. But there's all kinds of stuff like shopping. People need shoppers, just running errands for them or doing a particular mechanical. Maybe someone needs help with. I don't know. It's all kinds of tasks and I'll put it on the screen and I'll run through a bunch of'em, but that is more of a local, like you're in an area, so say you're gonna be in a particular city for a month, you might go there and see if there's any tasks that you could do and make a little money at the same time. So maybe not a full-time job, but definitely some side money that might be very helpful.

Speaker 2:

So one of the big reasons we didn't really freak out whenever Darlene lost her job is because we have the option of significantly lowering our expenses. And the number one way we're gonna do that is by boondocking. So now, the first year that we full-time rvd, we were not boondocking because we did not have a solar set up or any of that stuff. And so we were spending, on average, it was like 65 bucks a night on campgrounds

Speaker:

at least. Yeah,

Speaker 2:

yeah. Yeah. And we still had our home in Florida that we had renters that was basically covering our mortgage. But we're in a very different situation now in that we did sell our house and we also. Invested in solar, and I've talked about this in some of the other videos, but we always get this question, it cost us around$14,000. By the time it was all said and done, that included the installation cost. Okay? But what our solar setup enables us to do is we have enough electrical power that we can go through the day on a decent sunny day. Having enough electricity to basically run our house, essentially. Yeah. We do not run the air conditioners. We tend have a tendency to stay out west in that situation because it's much less humid there. And we could put ourselves in places where it's 70 ish degrees. Yeah. And it's very comfortable to stay out there. But, and since we have starlink, although we actually now we use T-Mobile a lot more than we do starlink or Hint. We have internet access pretty much everywhere we go. We've, in, in all the months we've been doing this, we've never really had an issue with internet access. And so we can work remotely pretty much anywhere. And I say anywhere, anywhere because we can go off grid and that cuts our expenses down to basically nothing. Maybe to some little propane costs. Maybe a little gasoline. Yeah.

Speaker:

Yeah. It's not as comfortable. Obviously, not everybody is meant to boondock. Maybe everybody's gonna go there. But here's the thing. We have that option. If we had our mortgage. And everything was set and we had no leeway with the house that we had before. If I lost my job, this would be like an o bleep situation. We now can adjust our spending. So we're, maybe go with only state parks, which are much lower than resorts, and then go with boondocking and which is nothing, and lower our expenses until. The job situation gets better and the clients start rolling in and we have that ability, which a lot of people wouldn't have in their traditional sticks and bricks house. So don't freak out if you have this happen. You have options. And I think that's what gave us a little like. We have a budget for entertainment and certain amount for dining out, we can always shrink that. And you could do that at home too. The whole thing with being able to boondock and take your$60 a night,$50 a night, whatever you're spending, and take it down to zero is huge. So you have options of changing your lifestyle a little bit more so than in other places. So my job loss hopefully. Has given you a lot of information because you know that's what you do. As soon as something like that happens, you start looking at what are my options? And I think we've given you some that maybe you hadn't thought about before. If you have more questions about some of the stuff that we talked about, throw your comments in in there and let I'll try to answer everyone as much as I can, but no, you're not alone.

Speaker 2:

Plus, we'd like to know what you do. If you have, there are probably a lot of you that are watching this video. Maybe you have a full-time gig on the road or side gig or whatever, and you're doing something. Completely different or Oh sure. Whatever. Just please leave comments down below because we want, we would like everybody that watches our videos to get ideas, not just from us, but from you as well. Oh, we

Speaker:

learned so much from you guys and we appreciate a lot of the comments we get giving us even more great information. So look at the comments because there's some great info in there as well. I do wanna say, if you're someone who had been kicking the tires about going full time and the whole job thing has been weighing heavy, like. We can't do that. We have to wait for retirement or we have to find different jobs before we can go do this thing. The jobs are out there. I think you just have to get brave. I think you need to be confident in yourself. Go out there and find the thing that you wanna do. Don't work a job they don't like. We should all be beyond that. But find something you have a passion for or something you can learn and get out there. Make it work for you so you can get on the road because. We've seen some amazing things. We have really put ourself out there. Yes, we lose time'cause we're working during the day. We're not retired. However, we got out there and we did it even though we're still needing to work. And it has been awesome.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's what our channel is about. There's like, there's no tomorrow.'cause there may not be a tomorrow, there's no guarantee that you're gonna live long enough to retire.

Speaker:

You don't know what tomorrow's gonna bring. So do it today.

Speaker 4:

Thanks for tuning in to the like, there's No Tomorrow podcast. I'm Barry Nicholson, along with Darlene, and if you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to leave us a five star review wherever you listen to podcasts. It really helps others find our show and allows us to keep creating this content. Visit like theres no tomorrow.net to join our free community and learn more about our going full-time RV course. Until next time, we encourage you to get out there and explore like there's no tomorrow.