Why would someone choose an RV over a tiny house? When Brian Aleksivich and his wife downsized from a 35-acre homestead they chose an RV over a tiny house on wheels. In this episode, we explore the advantages and disadvantages of their choice, factors to consider when choosing between an RV and a tiny house, and also touch on the challenges of living with three Saint Bernards in a relatively small space.

In This Episode:

  • Making an RV suitable for full-time living
  • Clever water management solutions
  • Downsizing from a homestead to a travel trailer
  • Can tiny homes work for big dogs?
  • Pointers for starting out with RV living

Links and Resources:

 

Guest Bio:

Brian Aleksivich

Brian Aleksivich

After establishing a 35-acre homestead in MN Brian and his wife decided to escape the cold, but had no idea where they wanted to go. After exploring many different options they decided to hit the road in a travel trailer with their three St. Bernards. The LOTS Project is documenting the journey.

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This Week's Sponsor:

 

PODX GO Tiny Homes

Are you looking for a compact and affordable way to streamline your lifestyle? PODX Go’s meticulously designed tiny home expands from a trailer to a 364-square-foot home with just the push of a button. Certified by NOAH and build to ANSI119.5 standards, the Grande S1 is towable with an F250 or equivalent. The PODX GO home is 99% factory built with healthy and eco-friendly materials, so you can rest easy knowing your home is taking care of you and the environment. It features a fully fitted kitchen, bedroom, bath, and living room with ingenious storage spaces throughout. PODX Go has even partnered with Renogy solar systems, so you can live off-grid or reduce your energy bills. POD X Go has launched its crowdfunding campaign with special pricing starting from just .49,000 dollars. Visit PodXGo.com to watch a video of the S1 unfold, and to get the crowdfunding launch discount. Thank you so much to Pod X Go for sponsoring our show.

 

More Photos:

The trailer is 32 feet long and has two slideouts

They tow the trailer with an F250

Solar helps them be able to park almost anywhere they want

 

Brian put about $15k worth of work into the trailer to get it ready for full-time living

Brian built out the systems himself

The woodstove came in handy when temps recently dropped into the teens!

 

They share their tiny abode with 3 Saint Bernards

Brian says it's time to move on when you don't need GPS to get around town anymore

 

Brian Aleksivich 0:00

Everything that we put into it, though, is removable and repurposable I designed all the systems myself, I installed them all myself. I know how they went in. I know how they come out. And I really kept that in mind.

Ethan Waldman 0:14

Welcome to the Tiny House Lifestyle Podcast, the show where you learn how to plan, build and live the tiny lifestyle. I'm your host, Ethan Waldman, and this is episode 255 with Brian Aleksivich. I met Brian when he asked to interview me on his website, the LOTS Project, which is a show primarily for people who are living full time in RVs. We got to talking and I realized that I've never had an RV dweller on the show. And what I really like about Brian is that he downsized from a 35 acre homestead to living in an RV. So a major downsize that took years. And him and his wife also considered a tiny house on wheels, but they ended up deciding against it. And so in this interview, we'll talk through some of the reasons why you might choose an RV over a tiny house and what the advantages and disadvantages are to that decision. I hope you stick around.

Are you looking for a compact and affordable way to streamline your lifestyle? I'd like to tell you about the sponsor of this week's episode PodX GO and their new Grande S1 tiny home. This meticulously designed tiny home expands from a trailer to a 364 square foot home with just the push of a button. Certified by NOAH and built to ANSI 119.5 standards, the Grande S1 is towable with an F250 or equivalent. The PodX GO home is 99% factory built with healthy and eco friendly materials that you can rest easy knowing your home is taking care of you and the environment. It features a fully fitted kitchen, bedroom, bath, and living room with ingenious storage spaces throughout. PodX GO has even partnered with Renogy Solar Systems so you can live off grid or reduce your energy bills. Discover the ultimate choice for your tiny lifestyle with PodX GO's Grande S1 model. PodX GO has launched their crowdfunding campaign with special pricing starting from just $49,000. Visit podxgo.com to watch a video of the S1 unfold and to get the crowdfunding launch discount. Again that website is poxgo.com. Thank you so much to PodX GO for sponsoring our show!

Right, I am here with Brian Aleksivich. After establishing a 35-acre homestead in Minnesota, Brian and his wife decided to escape the cold, but had no idea where they wanted to go. After exploring many different options, they decided to hit the road in a travel trailer with their three St. Bernard's. The LOTS Project is documenting the journey. Brian, welcome to the show.

Brian Aleksivich 3:30

Hey, Ethan, how's it going?

Ethan Waldman 3:32

Pretty good. Pretty good. Thanks for being here.

Brian Aleksivich 3:34

Oh, no problem. Thanks for having me.

Ethan Waldman 3:36

You're very welcome. So you actually interviewed me for your show a couple of weeks ago. And I got to kind of thinking and realizing that I had never really had anyone on Tiny House Lifestyle Podcast to talk specifically about life in an RV. And like, early on in the tiny house movement. I think there was like a lot of like, almost sensitivity, because we got the question a lot like, "Oh, why don't you just build an RV? Like or why don't you just buy an RV?" And it was always like, "No, that's a very different thing." And, but I feel like we're at we're at the point now where like it's differentiated enough that we don't need to be quite as as sensitive about it. So...

Brian Aleksivich 4:18

Right, right, right.

Ethan Waldman 4:19

So tell me I guess I'm curious really to hear about your decision making process because you you really mentioned when we did our interview, you mentioned that you and your wife were thinking about a tiny house on wheels, so to kind of talk me through it.

Brian Aleksivich 4:34

Yeah, yeah. So, man, this was back. We've been on the road since September. I think we we started planning that like two years prior to that.

Ethan Waldman 4:45

Okay.

Brian Aleksivich 4:46

It all culminated with a big snowstorm in Minnesota. It was like in the middle of October and we just kind of threw our hands up and said, "We love this lifestyle. We love the farm. We've got to move." And so... "We just got to get out of the cold." And so we kind of started looking around on the internet and bopping around on different kind of looking at different YouTube channels. And we settled on the mountains of Idaho, we're like, no restrictions and this and that. And we're like, okay, and then we started looking into alternative lifestyles we were looking at, or living quarters. We looked deeply into a Yurt, basically was what we decided on. Yeah, just, we, we were, we were ready to move out of the normal home. And we were looking for raw land, we kind of wanted to develop it all ourselves. We considered tiny homes, we considered a Yurt which we felt that we could move easier if we wanted to move to a different property at some point. The tiny home. I have, I have a long background in in trailers and industrial in situations and I was really hesitant to do the traveling tiny home. I just didn't like, didn't like a lot of pulling it down the road.

Ethan Waldman 6:08

Yeah.

Brian Aleksivich 6:09

And since we were going to sit there, we dove into the Yurt, we went down that road more and we just kind of liked it.

Ethan Waldman 6:15

Okay.

Brian Aleksivich 6:16

And at one point, we just finally said, Well, what are we going to do when we get there first? Well, how are we going to get to this property that we haven't bought yet? Okay, when we get there, what are we going to live in? Yeah. And so we said, well, let's let's do a travel trailer, we'll take a travel trailer out there, we'll, we'll live in it. While we put the Yurt up while we establish the property while we get whatever utilities we want them or not. And so we decided on that where we're going to do that. And one day, we looked and said, Why are we going to Idaho? Like neither of us had ever really been to the mountains.

Ethan Waldman 6:50

Sounds much warmer than Minnesota to me.

Brian Aleksivich 6:53

Well, they're you know, you have the you have the banana belt there right at the bottom of the mountains. That is like it's a zone seven. And in Minnesota, we're like a three a a three border lines. So it was it was pretty rough. So we're like, well, we'll do up this travel trailer, we'll live in it and well, why are we going to Idaho? Why don't we go look around? If we're building out this travel trailer, and we don't know where we want to be? Why don't we just go exploring? Yeah, and that's how we ended up in the Travel Trailer. But you know, right along the same lines as why people kind of explore the tiny house living we went into all of that same scenarios, deciding on a small space. I think we all share that common bond of a small space whether it's stationary, tiny home RV, your anything alternative like that.

Ethan Waldman 7:47

Yeah. Interesting. So, so now you're you've been on the road now for how long?

Brian Aleksivich 7:56

Since September, we took off mid September. We were supposed to close on our house right at the beginning of September and it ended up falling through and it was a big mess and we just decided to take off before winter. So we've been traveling now for about five six months.

Ethan Waldman 8:11

Nice, nice. So give me some some deets on your travel trailer like you know, what are the dimensions what what features does it have? How much does it weigh, you know that kind of stuff?

Brian Aleksivich 8:23

Sure, sure. So we picked up a 2014 32 foot Palomino Puma pull behind. So it's a it's a pull behind bumper pull trailer.

Ethan Waldman 8:35

Okay.

Brian Aleksivich 8:36

I'm six foot five.

Ethan Waldman 8:37

Yep.

Brian Aleksivich 8:38

So I really am limited in the in the fifth wheel type travel travel trailers because usually the bedroom is in the front and to be able to have head clearance for me the thing has just got to be enormous tall. So we went with the bumper pull. We have two slide outs we have one in the main room which is kind of like the living room where I'm sitting right now actually is the one side out and then the other is in the back. Basically when we bought it we got it it almost completely

Ethan Waldman 9:10

Wow.

Brian Aleksivich 9:10

It had like a bunkhouse in it. We don't need that. It's it's my wife and I and our three Saint Bernards and so like open space is premium for all the large bodies. She's this is the smallest one in here. All the dogs are way more than her and less than me and so getting it open we took out all the bunks, we took out all like the extra sleeping storage. We installed 1100 watts of solar with 350 Amp Hours of lithium batteries. We put it in a composting toilet and mini woodstove were really set up we've we spent that will last three months in actually like a old watermelon field in Texas. Just hanging out in and out of the cold. So We don't need hookups, we really focused on being able to go to a piece of rock property when we want to purchase one. Yeah, or be able to stay on like BLM land when we're traveling around. So we really made ourselves so self sufficient like that. And we towe it around with an F250 because it is super heavy. I don't I can't even really tell you what it weighs. At the very moment. We're kind of decluttering and, and actually throwing out more crap since we parked and started unpacking everything we realized we didn't need everything that we thought we wanted to bring. So we're gonna re wait when we move. But yeah, we we stacked it pretty, pretty heavy.

Ethan Waldman 10:40

If you had to guess what would you think?

Brian Aleksivich 10:43

My wife says were 11,000

Ethan Waldman 10:45

Oh, wow. Okay.

Brian Aleksivich 10:47

For the trailer.

Ethan Waldman 10:48

Yeah. All right. All right.

Brian Aleksivich 10:50

Yeah, that's definitely going with the F 250. And I mean, we're already talking we want to go smaller. We, we didn't know what we wanted. Really. We assumed between the two of us everything we own. Because we don't have like a secret stash storage locker anywhere. We have everything with us. Yeah. And so we saw we needed a lot of storage room. And as we're like, as we're getting on the road, and actually realizing what's important and what we want. We're we're throwing stuff away. It's fantastic. We have a dumpster here at the place we're staying. And we've definitely utilize that to to the fullest extent as we we go through things and go what was I think?

Ethan Waldman 11:32

So what are you? What did you spend on the trailer? And how much did you put into it on the on the on the gut job?

Brian Aleksivich 11:41

It was it was 17 I think we was $17,000 when we bought the trailer, we got it out I did all the work I think we ended up putting about I would say another $15k into it with all the solar components and everything. Everything that we put into it though, is removable and repurposed. I designed all the systems myself I installed them all myself, I know how they went in, I know how they come out. And I really kept that in mind we kind of have a plan of using this as a kind of a home base if we do buy a property somewhere that we can just set it and leave it and whether we leave the systems with it or put it in a new trailer with us and taken along.

Ethan Waldman 12:28

Nice.

Brian Aleksivich 12:29

That's all been designed for that or if something happens to this where we have to get rid of it we can take all this equipment with us.

Ethan Waldman 12:36

So because this is travel trailer, I'm guessing it has some like grey water holding tanks and freshwater holding tanks. How much capacity do you have onboard?

Brian Aleksivich 12:48

We have 45 gallons freshwater.

Ethan Waldman 12:51

Okay.

Brian Aleksivich 12:52

And we don't use the black water anymore since we went to the composting toilet so we had I believe it was 45 gallons combined, I ended up putting a combined tank on the combine the black and the gray. And we would never fill it. We we really never fill it and then we also put a 70 gallon poly tank in the back of our truck that sits in the front that we can fill so we don't have to hook up the trailer to go get water we can just take the truck where wherever we we can scavenge, fill the tank and bring it back.

Ethan Waldman 13:27

That's really smart.

Brian Aleksivich 13:29

Yeah, we try not to drive around with it full. Yeah, it's another 500 pounds. But when we're local and we want to go run and get get water it's really really nice.

Ethan Waldman 13:41

Yeah, yeah, that's clever. And what's the process like for filling those tanks? Can you do it from the outside of the trailer?

Brian Aleksivich 13:48

Yeah, yeah, there's actually so if we do get a spot that has a water hookup like your typical RV spot, we can just hook the hose up to the main line and have pressurized water. What we do normally is so I can transfer it from my truck to the trailer I took so we have an RV 12-volt water pump in the trailer for us. I bought a spare one of those because I don't want to be without one and then I wired alligator clips to it so I use that to actually transfer the water from the truck to the trailer and just use a hose into the fill tank or if I don't feel like getting all that out we have some jerry cans and I just like gravity feed them into the jerry cans and dump them in. That's what I usually end up doing anyway because it's nice to stand outside and just enjoy the outside instead of listening to the pump run.

Ethan Waldman 14:44

Yeah, yeah, totally. So as part of your your gut job did you did you add any insulation to the trailer and you know have you been anywhere cold in the in the in the travel trailer?

Brian Aleksivich 14:56

We did a little bit. We did, I ended up stripping much of the exterior walls down. That's kind of where we stopped. There were some sections that we peeled out. And when we did we double insulated with like, reflectix. Yeah, we haven't been anywhere cold. We're kind of trying to avoid that. We were in Texas. About a month ago, it got down below freezing for like four or five days. Basically, we just drained all our water and ran the woodstove constantly had the propane backup furnace. And, I mean, it stayed relatively comfortable in here. I think we got there probably about 50 degrees.

All right. All right.

So it was down in the teens. So you really adapt. We ride the temperature in here anywhere between 45 and 80. Really interesting. Just like being outside, just like being outside.

Ethan Waldman 15:53

So you know, in your in your previous life, you know, in in, you know, you were homesteading, 35 acres, you know, everyone that I know who has a farm or homestead has so much stuff, tools, equipment, supplies, like it is like, it's not a bad lifestyle. And I'm not saying this with any judgment, because you need that stuff to do the lifestyle but I'm curious, you know, what was it like going from that to you know, downsizing as small as living in a in a travel trailer.

Brian Aleksivich 16:28

It was painful. It was, it was really painful. I mean, I'll I'll kind of cop to being borderline hoarder. Just in the mentality of like you said, with the homestead like, I can use this for something, and I have the space for it. Like I had a, I had a 40x100 barn that I could fill with whatever whatever I wanted, whether it be livestock or supplies, quote, unquote, supplies, we had a ton of shit and just tools and equipment and yeah, fence supplies and bird supplies and feeders and all of that stuff. That's why it took so long really. It was just, it was a disaster to try to do. We donated a lot. We got a bunch of dumpsters. And then we sold the property with a lot of the stuff that we felt would be valuable for someone that wanted to do a homestead in the future. And it came up with a lot of junk to add it was just kind of like you get the good with the bad and here's what it is. Yeah, it was definitely definitely well, we had a 1500 square foot house, 25x25 detached garage, a 10x25 shed, 100x60 barn and then another chicken coop building that had a bunch of crap in it too.

Ethan Waldman 17:51

Wow. Wow. Yeah.

Brian Aleksivich 17:54

Yeah, it was a lot. It's definitely a big change. But once I decided that that's what I wanted to do and started doing it and realize how good it felt. Like I said, we've we've sent we've left, we've been throwing more away to where we were like, Okay, this is the bare minimum we'll ever keep. We'll always have this stuff. And we're just like, Yeah, we don't need it. Do you?

Ethan Waldman 18:16

Do you miss anything about that lifestyle?

Brian Aleksivich 18:19

I missed the food security. I missed the I missed the being able to go out and grab some eggs or go out and cull a chicken if I wanted, the seven deep freezers I had full of meat that I knew where it was raised. It was hatched, born, or raised on my property, dispatched on my property, and put in my freezer. It doesn't get any more food secure than that. That's what I miss.

Ethan Waldman 18:44

Yeah.

Brian Aleksivich 18:46

Other than that, I love this. I love I love being in different places. We've really actually settled down here for about a couple months now. I've been helping a friend with some work. And we've realized that we don't want to be stationary this long. It just gets you complacent. We realize it's kind of the tipping point that we want to start moving when we don't need to use the GPS anymore. Like when we go out to go to the store and you're like, Oh, I know. I know how to get there at home. No problem. It's time to kind of move somewhere else.

Ethan Waldman 19:18

Yeah, yeah. That's cool. So how often are you moving and it sounds like it sounds like you're not staying in the your typical RV parks like how did you hook up with with the middle of the watermelon field?

Brian Aleksivich 19:34

Well, we target hipcamp. When we were up in Minnesota, I ran hipcamp In one of the backfields of our property. Okay, basically it's private campground. So that was kind of my MO or, or BLM land, stuff like that. When we wanted to stay long term down here to come down and help my friend out. I started looking for hipcamp goes to his area, found one reached out to the landowner said, Hey, I don't need one of your spots. If you just have someplace I can park out of the way kind of isolated so my dogs aren't bothered and this and that. We don't need anything. And so we made an arrangement. They hooked me up with a little bit of a deal. We're just kind of parked off to the side. And yeah, they got 400 acres here. And it's pretty private. It's it's more private here than my homestead in Minnesota.

Ethan Waldman 20:29

Wow. Wow.

Brian Aleksivich 20:31

So that's kind of how I hooked up with them.

Ethan Waldman 20:35

Nice. How do the dogs like living tiny?

Brian Aleksivich 20:40

You know that they were the reason we grabbed the 32. Yeah, they were the reason we grabbed the 32 foot travel trailer. And they sit on top of us. They like literally, like right now I have one under my legs. And I have one behind my chair. And the other one is like I could reach out and touch it. So...

Ethan Waldman 20:59

Wow.

Brian Aleksivich 21:00

Yeah, we didn't have the dogs or we had the dogs before we decided to do this.

Ethan Waldman 21:06

Yeah.

Brian Aleksivich 21:07

So they just kind of got worked into the plans. I think we realized that it won't happen again. Yeah, we love them to death and they're here till the end. But when the end is the end, I don't think we'll have St. Bernards anymore. And we've definitely experienced how to do this at at at its hardest. Yeah, yeah, the water is ridiculous that we go through because of how much they drink. And that I think that and the mass from the dogs because yeah, Saint Bernards are notoriously gross animals. Yeah, probably but they're lovers.

Ethan Waldman 21:44

Yeah, they're they're super loving would probably when you're in a bigger house, the like impact of their slobber and messiness is more dispersed.

Brian Aleksivich 21:56

Oh, yeah, I can look around the trailer and you can tell where they eat. And then where they shake their head because you can look up and there's like a ring around the camper? Yeah, where you've tried to clean up all the slobber, but it'll like land on the ceiling. And you're like, why is there like, why is there a slobber slinger thing on the ceiling? Ceiling? And yeah, it gets interesting.

Ethan Waldman 22:17

Nice. Nice. So what's, what's the plan moving forward from here? It sounds like you are Did you buy land in Idaho?

Brian Aleksivich 22:27

No, we didn't, we haven't bought any land, we kind of put a nest egg away when we sold our property. RMO really is we're going to travel, we're going to find places that we like, we're hoping to pick up one to two acres here, there everywhere. raw land, ideally with a driveway or access to begin with. So I don't have to do that. But basically someplace to park my trailer in the places I like. And then develop them into hip camps myself. So when I'm not using them, I can have them for residual income and ongoing income. And yeah, just kind of traveling around. I'm doing in person and online consults for people that also want to set up if camps. So traveling to consulting gigs is kind of easy when you have a trailer, and you cook and go to them. So we have waypoints. And we just kind of play on the adventures in between in between those appointments. And that's kind of where we're going to roll for now. We're here until I think March. And then we're going to kind of roll up to Tennessee that I have to go up to the east coast a little bit to visit some family and then out to South Dakota. And that's kind of the first half of our year coming up. So nice.

Ethan Waldman 23:48

Now, it seems that the distinction between a travel trailer and a tiny house if you want to be traveling and on the road, that's like one of the main benefits. And then there's also you know, just the cost I mean, the fact that you were able to buy that travel trailer for for 17k. And you probably didn't need to get it but you you decided to put some some work into it. Um, so the cost is pretty significant compared to a tiny house on wheels. Do you have any tips for you know, the full time lifestyle in a travel trailer like that, like maybe tips for somebody who's considering a tiny house but is now thinking okay, maybe maybe a travel trailer will be better for my lifestyle?

Brian Aleksivich 24:35

Yeah. Do your research as far as well. Prices have gone up. Let me tell you, I we bought our trailer now it would be it'll be four years ago, three years ago in September. So we're two and a half years in with all the stuff that went down. Prices kind of skyrocketed. I don't know if they're coming down. I'm not really in the market. For a new trailer, but what I would suggest is figure out the trailer you want, and then buy your vehicle to tow it, it gets way easier to match the tow weight of the trailer to what your vehicle is able to do. If you have a truck, if you have to work within those bounds, you got to you got to do what you got to do. But if you have nothing like we went from a Subaru Outback, as what we had when we started this whole thing, we bought the trailer first we had somebody tow it home for us, and then we bought a truck that was comparable to towing it. I think that was that was an easier way for us to do it. And it allowed us to kind of get the trailer where we wanted and then match the vehicle to it.

Ethan Waldman 25:48

Got it.

Brian Aleksivich 25:50

You're probably you're gonna want to go and walk through the things and spend some time and impossibly rent one. Do your research and know what you're getting into before you do it. There's I'm in a lot of online full time RVer communities and I see people that are on the road, they've been on the road for a month, asking questions that like I dove into, before I even decided that I was going to do it, let alone before I took off full time. And that scares me like that people are willing to just just I mean, go for it, do it. Like I'm all about that. But cover your bases and know what's going on. Know how your systems work, know how everything functions, if you didn't install it yourself, and you don't know how it is find somebody and you might have to pay a couple of bucks, but find somebody to walk you through that system. So when you are camping, you're not stuck when it doesn't work, like you know what's going on? Yeah, there's a big lack of mobile RV techs mechanics, like somebody that's gonna come to you and fix it. And if you're stuck somewhere, you're stuck somewhere. And either you got to figure it out and know how it works. Or you got to get it somewhere to somebody to fix it. So I would really suggest knowing your thing inside out before you really go full time.

Ethan Waldman 27:11

Got it. Got it. So spend some time like maybe living in it on your property or somewhere nearby before you.

Brian Aleksivich 27:17

Yeah, I mean, we spent two years living in ours as we retrofitted it. Like I have the advantage of I installed pretty much everything in it. So like I know how it works, because I built it. But yeah, we lived in our driveway for I think it was almost two years while we did the whole conversion.

Ethan Waldman 27:31

Yeah. Yeah. So tell me about about kind of the Hipcamp opportunity. You know, it's it's kind of the sleeper option versus Airbnb. But you know, what kind of what kind of things are you seeing there? And what what kind of opportunities for someone who maybe is, you know, own some land and is trying to earn some extra money to build that tiny house?

Brian Aleksivich 27:55

Yeah, yeah. So Hipcamp is basically the Airbnb of the camping world. There are several I mean, there's other there's other companies that do the same thing. But basically, it's a, you're a private landowner and you want to rent out a spot on your property. Just like an Airbnb renting out a room.

Ethan Waldman 28:15

Yep.

Brian Aleksivich 28:16

So someone that has a property can set up a tent site, they can set up a primitive camping site that doesn't have any electricity. There's there's certain restrictions depending on where you're at. There's toilet restrictions, where you might have to put in like a composting toilet or require campers to bring something with them or put in an outhouse. So there's the ins and outs of all the regulations.

Ethan Waldman 28:39

Okay.

Brian Aleksivich 28:40

But basically, it's an online calendar that people can browse your listing, and rent a camping spot, come out and pitch a tent to have a campsite. There's all sorts of upsell options that you can do for them different amenities that you can offer. Yeah, it's a big wide open, it's basically like hotel room shopping. For campsites.

Ethan Waldman 29:02

Yeah, the site I checked it out. I mean, like, if you're familiar with the Airbnb platform, using the hipcamp website will feel pretty familiar to you.

Brian Aleksivich 29:13

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, for sure. For sure. And, and that's where I draw like my advice from is someone that that has set one up, but also more as on the camper side. So I bring that perspective, someone that's looking to set up a site, what I look for when I'm looking for a camping site, what turns me on what turns me off, I talked to other campers and decided and see what they're seeing people that are in different situations than me that need hookups or are time camping. When I'm at these places, I talked to the other campers. I talked to the owners. Just bringing that wealth of knowledge and experience is someone trying to set this up on their own. So yeah, I offer all sorts of services down that road as far as anything from just answering questions to full smash on site setting everything up, documenting it and putting the website up and then even as far as managing the listing for them, so if they're off site, and they don't want to deal with it, I'll do that. I'll do that I'll run I'll do the customer service, find people to do like the on site maintenance for them and things like that. So awesome. It's, it's an open, open option, for sure.

Ethan Waldman 30:22

Sweet, sweet. Well, I really appreciate you sharing all the, you know, the kind of journey that you've been on, because that's again, just wow, what a what a transition going from a 35 acre homestead to it to a travel trailer.

Brian Aleksivich 30:38

Yeah, yeah, it was definitely a shock for sure. Yeah.

Ethan Waldman 30:41

Awesome. Well, you know, one thing that I like to ask all my guests is, you know, what are two or three resources that that were really helpful for you on your, on your tiny house journey that you'd like to share with our listeners?

Brian Aleksivich 30:52

Sure. YouTube, YouTube University, for sure. That's where I dug in, basically, kind of found the personalities that I like, yep. And follow them and just dove in to all the resources. I'm a research junkie, I, that's kind of why I go down this consulting road, and do all that thing, because I do more research than I'll ever need for myself. Just so I know, just in case, so to be able to share that. YouTube. I mean, really, I dove into YouTube. And and I can't tell you any specific channels, because most likely at this point, they're probably a lot of them are non existent. I actually interviewed someone a couple of weeks ago that I watched their YouTube channel when I was building my trailer. And I didn't put two and two together. So I'm not really good with the names but definitely dive in, do your keyword searches, research what you need to want and and follow those personalities that you like, nice. Any any other ones? You know, you could always come to my channel.

Ethan Waldman 31:58

Tell me about the LOTS Project.

Brian Aleksivich 32:02

The LOTSProject.com is is kind of the home base for all our stuff. We kind of dive into our whole life under this. So we have a lot of side projects going on with everything that else that interests us, which isn't really pertinent to this conversation. But yeah, there's a lot of different avenues you can come to find it. There's LOTSProject.com

Ethan Waldman 32:21

Awesome. Well, Brian Alexievich thank you so much for being a guest on the show today. Hey, no problem. Thanks for having me, Jason. Thank you so much to Brian Aleksivich for being a guest on the show today. You can find the show notes including pictures of Brian's RV, a complete transcript, and links to all of Brian's work at thetinyhouse.net/255. Again, that's thetinyhouse.net/255.

Thank you so much to PODX Go for sponsoring the podcast this week. Don't forget to check out PODXGo.com to learn more about their crowdfunding launch and check out the Grande S1 tiny house.

Well, that is all for this week. I'm your host Ethan Waldman, and I'll be back next week with another episode of the Tiny House Lifestyle Podcast.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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