Airstream Owner? You Need to Know Jennifer Eggers - The Riveted Adviser

Hi everybody, welcome back to Zuffer Travels. My name is Randy, and in this video we had the pleasure of talking to Jennifer Eggers who is the Riveted Advisor, and she helps people understand the systems and the complexity of their Airstreams, but I'm assuming any other RV too. She has a webpage that you can download information on, but let's get to the conversation so you can get to meet her too. So we've got a great opportunity here today to talk to Jennifer Eggers, and she is the Riveted Advisor. This is a brand new venture for you? Yes, brand new. And so she's going to tell us about it. So yeah, so first thank you so much for having me on the show. It's great to be here and awesome to to be asked, so thank you for inviting me. Riveted Advisor is a brand new endeavor. In fact, I wasn't entirely sure, and maybe I'm still not a bit, whether it's a business or hobby, but it started as really a way to help Airstreamers learn more about their trailers and really create more understanding, because the idea is that understanding increases confidence, and confidence is what really keeps us on the road and makes us more comfortable and allows us to travel farther, tow smarter. We all started somewhere. Exactly, and I think that's the big thing. I mean, I've been through quite the journey the last five years with a couple of trailers. The second one was a Royal Lemon, and so it was definitely a lemon, but I would say it was probably the most educational trailer that I could have had. So instead of giving up and getting frustrated with it, I had it, so I decided that I was going to learn everything I could and try to fix as much as I could myself. I certainly had a lot of warranty work and things like that, but a lot of times you're on the road and you're a thousand miles from anywhere that you would want to get it repaired, and quite honestly, I mean, the dealers don't have time, the service departments are overbooked, and the owner's manuals are written by engineers, and so what becomes very difficult is learning all the systems and really learning everything there is. So I started down that journey, and then I realized that if someone explains it in kitchen English, it actually isn't that hard to really learn and understand how these systems work. So what was initially very intimidating and an incredibly steep learning curve became something that I really sought to understand, and so I went out and I got level one RVTI certification, I'm working on level two, thank you. It may be a while because it's a lot of work, but the best thing is I remember what it was like to know nothing, and I remember when I was climbing that learning curve, people said to me, well, your fifth trip is going to be so much easier than your first trip, and so I bought the trailer late in the season, and I was absolutely determined to have five trips by the end of the season so I could climb the learning curve, and so I think what it taught me though is how can I make this easier for other people, and so Rivet Advisor was really born out of a way to create understanding to drive confidence and help people who might be afraid to break things, let's say, right? So people don't, you know, when you're stuck on the road and something goes wrong, it might be something really simple, you know, maybe the water pump doesn't pressurize, that happened to me in March, or maybe, you know, your jacket's stuck, or you can't get your propane heater to work, or your hot water heater's going hot and cold, I mean, but most of these things have pretty simple fixes. Right, these are all like the things that a seasoned RVer has experienced at some point, and maybe they were able to solve it by talking to another RVer at the campfire, but we're not always in that situation. That's right. I mean, it's nice because we're at a rally here, and there's a lot of... Oh, this is great for that. Right, and so sharing of information is great, but a lot of times you're traveling by yourself, and you're parked next to a whole bunch of strangers, and you know... And then what do I do? Yeah, right, then what do you do? And that's where you come in. Well, I'll tell you what happens, though, is what happens is people end up on Facebook at 10 30 at night trying to find the answer, and they get 75 different answers that all conflict, and they don't know who to listen to. Right. And then you end up in, you know, maybe a bigger mess, or you try your owner's manual, and, you know, that page is missing, or it didn't mention that, which I think is more often than not. So what we're trying to really be is the trusted place where people can get information to really explain the systems, and help people understand what's a simple fix, what can I be comfortable doing, versus when do I really need to call a professional, what do I really need to wait for, and, you know, maybe call a mobile tech, or take it to a dealer, or whatever, or an independent repair shop. You know, but the thing is, if you understand, we're not trying to teach people to build refrigerators, and, you know, reconfigure. What we're trying to do is help them understand what's a simple fix, and how, if I understand the system, then I can understand how to troubleshoot. Right. You bring up a good point, because a lot of people search the internet, they go to all the air streamers cases, they go to air forums, or someplace like that, and a friend of mine uses the example, you know, go on air forums and search what's the best tire pressure for your trailer. You're going to get a hundred different answers. Everyone's got an opinion of what that should be. Right. And how do you know which one's right? Right. And, you know, having someone that's a trusted advisor will tell you, well, there's not the best air pressure for your vehicle. You need to figure this out, and that will tell you what you should do, but you can't just take someone's opinion saying, I run 75 pounds of air on my tires, and the other guy over here says, no, I run 50. That's right. You know, you come in and say, no, figure this out. What's the weight of your vehicle? What type of tires you have? You take all those variables in there, and give you the correct answer. Absolutely. What we try to do is educate people on how to figure things out. Yes. Because the more educated they are, the more confident that they can become in figuring it out on their own when I'm not around, or when they don't know who to listen to, or they don't have the answer. What I also would say is there's not one way to do this. So, I mean, I'm happy to share how I did the research, how I learned it, how I thought about it, how I still think about it, and what I run on my rig. But at the end of the day, I'm also happy to share there's different schools of thought. I mean, it's just like hitches, God forbid, or, the size of your truck, right? There's a million ways to think this through. The other thing I will say is that at Rivet Advisor, we are not paid for recommendations. I don't review products, and they don't send me stuff and pay me for good recommendations. If you see a recommendation on Rivet Advisor, it's something that's either on my rig, or something that I would use if it applied. So, we've really tested this stuff, and I don't recommend it if it's not something that I've used, and I thoroughly stand behind. We're not endorsed. We're not paid to do that. I would also say that most of the stuff out there is free. Most of what I do is free. The conversations are certainly free if you see me at a rally, but the checklists are free. The blogs are free. There's a lot of hacks and simple fixes and recommendations, product recommendations, things like that. Those are all free. The only thing that has a cost is some of our field guides, and they're really made just to help people organize information so they have it at their fingertips in the field, and they just cover the cost of our website. That's really the only reason those are out there. Okay, so on your website, you have field guides that explain a little bit more about that. That's interesting. Those are, and we're building that library right now. There's about five out there now, but we're working on them. Actually, what I would love to do is, if your audience is game, anything that someone wants information on, we need to know what field guides to build next. So we've got a list, but if people have one they want or they're dealing with a problem, we're happy to look into that and answer questions for people. So the field guides, they're printable. They're designed to be high-quality print resolution. They can be printed and laminated if you want. They're all designed to be optimized for a tablet or mobile use. The idea is it's a downloadable file. You've got it at your fingertips when you are running with your Girard water heater and it's not working, or you're going hot and cold in your shower. Here's the adjustment. Here's the flow adjustment. That's one of the field guides is how to troubleshoot your water heater. There's going to be another one on troubleshooting your air conditioner. There'll be, I'm trying to think, there's one right now on how to use a multimeter without fear. So a lot of people, they buy a rig. People say, what tools do you have? They get a multimeter. They don't know how to use a multimeter, or maybe they haven't used it in a while, or they get a little nervous around electricity. We've got a field guide for that. Shows you exactly what settings, how to set it up, exactly how to do the test, what the results are telling you, why would you do the test. So it tells you exactly what to do for what, and then what the results should be. That is awesome. The multimeter is a great one to have because, again, that's something that can do so much for troubleshooting a lot of problems. You definitely want to have one, but like you said, a lot of people just don't know how to use it. So having a guide to have with that on your tablet or in your folder, however you carry it, makes a lot of sense. And it's written in kitchen English. I'll tell you, I mean, I guess I'm not too proud to say, I mean, I blew up too before I figured out how to use one because I thought I knew what I was doing and I really didn't understand what was going on that I was screwing up. So then I found out there were fuses in them that I probably blew the fuse and could have replaced it. But after I, I mean, it's kind of embarrassing, right? But, but I went out, I learned, I got the education and now I'm thinking, boy, other people should benefit from this because why should I be sitting on all this? Absolutely. So we also have an electrical guide for people who, once you learn how to use the multimeter, what are the common tests, DC and AC? So if I pull into a campground and I go, oh, I don't know about this pedestal. It doesn't look right. Something doesn't feel right. Test it with your multimeter. We've got instructions on, you know, when to do each kind of test. Again, what it, how to do it, where to put the probes, how to set up the meter, what should the results look like? We've got a set for AC and for DC. That's something I've got to look at. So, yeah. You know, we've tried to just make this as helpful as we can, again, kitchen English so that you don't have to learn all the theory if you don't want to, but we try to have it all in one place so that that moment when, you know, I have a friend that called me a couple of weeks ago with a furnace issue. So everybody says, oh, replace the sail switch. Well, okay, great. But how many people really know what a sail switch does? So we're going to, you know, we've got a guide there on how to troubleshoot a furnace. How do you know if it's your control board, your sail switch, your, you know, could be propane, could be anything. Right. But, you know, but there's a process for process of elimination to troubleshoot. And then we also walk you through how does the system work so that you understand it to figure out, you know, hey, is this problem bigger than me? Maybe I should call a professional. Yeah. That is awesome. I know so many people that could use that because a lot of times I'm the guy that gets called. I know exactly what that's like. And to be honest with you, I, I don't always know the answer, you know, and I have to figure these things out where, you know, it'd be, it's nice to know that there's a guide for that. And you know, you don't have to call me. You can figure these things out yourself. It may not be that complicated. And that library will continue to grow. I had, I wanted to just get some stuff out there. So we've, we put, I had written, I don't know, five or six of these. And then there's also a complete set of checklists that I built. I think I, when I started this, I got checklists from everyone who would send me a checklist, including Airstream. And then, you know, customized everything for my rig. And then, you know, went out and I have winterization, you know, sanitizing your tank, de-winterization. I've got, you know, hitching up. I've got interior departure, exterior departure, setting up your camp. I mean, everything you can think of is in there and those are all free. So we, you know, we started putting a lot of this stuff together. And so I just want to get it out there. So a lot of stuff's out there now, but, but it's going to grow. We're going to, we've got visions for, you know, 70, 80, 80 of these things coming, but it just takes time to build them. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Right, right, right. They do take a little bit of effort and time. And I have a day job. So this, this is not my day job. It's your fun job. It's my fun job. Yeah. It's really fun. Absolutely. It's really rewarding. But, but what was interesting to me, I think, was that I found there were, a woman called me out of the blue, I don't know, a couple months ago. And she, she actually had been airstreaming for almost four months. She had driven across the country. She was a former fighter pilot or I'm sorry, fighter jet mechanic. So this is not a non-technical person. I mean, this is somebody who, you know, is really technical, knows this stuff. She was in a rig for four months and was so just overwhelmed by things that were going wrong, little problems. How do I do this? Am I safe? You know, should I even be doing this? That I got the call and she was like, I don't know, I'm thinking about giving up. And I went and met with her. I spent a couple hours. We started at one end of her rig and went to the other. I answered about a page of questions that she had written down. And, you know, when we left, it was like, she really had the confidence to continue. And none of the, none of the problems that she had were anything, you know, really major. They were just stuff she wasn't familiar with. And so that's when it hit me that the more I can really, you know, just use what I've learned in the situations I've been in to help other people, you know, get through some of this stuff, the more confidence they have, the more fun they have, the more adventure, the more they can focus on their adventures and not on their rig. Yeah, that's great. So how does one get a hold of you? How do you, how do we get your advice? Well, I have two ways, really. There's a Facebook page. And I'll be explicit. It's not a group. I'm not interested in the, the interaction craziness of some of the other Airstream Facebook pages. And there are some great ones out there. In fact, the Rivet Collective has a fantastic Facebook page for, to connect shop owners with, with Airstreamers that have questions. And they have a lot of great technical information too. So we're not going to be a group, but we have a page where I post hacks. We post the field guides, any news, new blogs, things that are coming out. And then the... Your Facebook page is? The Facebook page is The Riveted Advisor. Okay. Is the Facebook page. And then the website is rivetedadvisor.com. Okay. And so that's where you can go on and you can certainly access the blog, all the free resources. You can kind of get a sense of our, our training philosophy and all the, all the information is out there as well. Jennifer, I think you got a, a really great product here. And I think there's a lot of people that's going to benefit from your knowledge that you're willing to share. And, you know, there's so many people out here that, you know, look at this lifestyle and just jump into it and then, you know, get frustrated because they have an issue and having a great resource like yours, it sounds like this a great solution for a lot of them. Thanks so much. I hope so. Our goal is really to become the owner's manual that people wish came with their trailer. Yes, exactly. That's what we're trying to do. That's the mission. All right. Well, thank you, Jennifer. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Yes. I hope you enjoyed this video. If you did, please give it a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel if you haven't done so already. Jennifer's website is the rivetedadvisor.com. Check it out. There's a lot of great information on there. Until the next time we will see you guys down the road. Take care, everybody.