Welcome to Feature Friday, where I’ll introduce you every week to a Roadpreneur building a business that lets them explore more often. Through these stories, you’ll gain sparks of inspiration that can be woven into your journey.
I first met Peggy and Tony Barthel at the RV Entrepreneur Roundtable in 2022. We were fortunate to camp alongside this power couple and equally fortunate not to have them throw tomatoes at our RV as we pulled out of the campground extra early to make the 12-hour drive back home.
From our time at the roundtable, I can tell you how genuine these two are. Not only do they LOVE the RV lifestyle, but they’re equally passionate about simplifying the world of camping for others through their podcast (a must-listen!), blog, and social media.
What you see is what you get with these two, and you get lots of support, laughter, and encouragement along your journey. The business model they’ve built around that support? That’s just a bonus for them and us.
Meet Tony and Peggy Barthel from StressLess Camping. You’re gonna love them.
What is your name and what do you do?
We are Tony and Peggy Barthel, and our business is StressLess Camping. We host a website and produce a podcast while traveling part-time in a small trailer. Our goal is to share our travel adventures and help others get the most out of the great American pastime, with RV and travel tips and tricks.
How do you seek adventure on the open road?
So far, our “main destination” on any given trip is attending a rally, conference, or teaching opportunity. When we have one of those events scheduled, Peggy sets home and our event destination in the RV Trip Wizard route planner and starts looking for fun places to visit along the way. We tend to be drawn to the more kitschy, silly destinations. So Peggy uses apps like Roadside and Atlas Obscura to find fun places to visit. Of course, it’s also a bonus if we can find a microbrewery in the vicinity of our overnight stops.
Our idea of adventure differs in that we aren’t very much into outdoor sports. We carry our electric bikes and ride around small towns. We prefer “nature walks” over “hikes,” so the popular adventure sites aren’t as high on our destination list.
What inspired you to start this business?
Tony worked for two years at an RV dealership. While there, he did sales and also managed warranty repairs. He found that there were common warranty claims, and people had the same questions repeatedly. Tony has always been an entrepreneur and a website developer, so he recognized the need for a resource he could refer to his customers to help answer their questions.
As a lifelong camper, Peggy loves travel and camping. She remembers at age eight, she and a friend turned an appliance box into an RV in the basement, and made up many travel adventures. Her extended family spent many weekends camping together as she was growing up. Peggy did a lot of tutoring in high school and college and feels at home adding details or explaining concepts in ways that are easy to understand. Also, not being a fan of early morning, she finds that the flexibility of work hours suits her natural rhythms.
Tony also is a lifetime listener of talk radio, which naturally led to podcast listening. He and another partner had a podcast about classic cars and had the equipment already, so we were in a good position to add podcasting to the website. We genuinely like to help people, and our goal with the podcast is to provide information that listeners can use for their own travels and to make the whole RV experience less frightening or less intimidating.
What do you like most about your business?
We have the freedom to travel and visit new places and visit friends, new and old. We “have” to camp, which is something we love very much.
What’s going through your audience’s mind when they come to you for help?
We anticipate that people see the name StressLess Camping and say, “Hey, I would like my camping experience to be stressless.” Our goal is to be approachable and honest. We build our reputation on being a reliable source of information. We try to provide tips for making camping and RVing more enjoyable and stress-free. That said, we have to remind people that StressLess Camping is a goal, not always a reality! However, armed with information, most stressors can be mitigated easily and not be a terrible interruption to travel.
How have you designed your business to run while you roam?
We manage every part of the business ourselves. Because we generate all of our own content, there is no automating the business. Our voices are our business. We carry our mics and other recording equipment when we travel. We modified our travel trailer to provide office space to work comfortably on the road. Peggy plans our travel days so there is time to work each day. We plan time to get our blogs written and our podcast planned, recorded, and edited each week. We often find topics to write and speak about while we are on the road. Often, we interview people we meet during our travels.
What challenges have you faced by running a business from the road?
It can sometimes be difficult to find the time to enjoy a location while still completing our workload. Sometimes we will be packing on a moving day and lamenting that we don’t have one or two more days to explore the area better.
For those wondering, internet access is no longer a problem. We travel with Starlink and have always been able to get enough signal. Whether we are in an RV resort or boondocking far off grid, we are connected and able to continue working.
If you had to start over again, what would you do differently?
Wow, that’s a great question. Peggy always says she wouldn’t be where she is if anything had been done differently. I suppose we might have started sooner when RV podcasting was in more of its infancy. Sometimes we wonder if we will ever get the big numbers of the people who started a few years before us.
What’s the biggest compliment you’ve ever received?
We were sitting in a brewery in Indiana one evening, and two couples walked up to us and asked if we were StressLess Camping. We were so flattered to be recognized “in the wild,” and we still get that feeling when we introduce ourselves and someone says, “Oh, we listen to you every week.”
Every time we receive an email telling us we have helped someone with their RV adventure, we know we are on the right track.
What are you getting excited about right now?
Our next road trip, as always! This year, we have scheduled many “RV basic training” classes, and we are so honored and pleased to work with groups such as Girl Camper to help people learn more about their RVs and become more confident in their use.
Later this year, we are planning to tour the New England states with a friend. We have had so many fun adventures with Bill and are excited to see what we find this year.
Where can we connect with you?
You can find us at www.stresslesscamping.com, or all the social places as StressLess Camping. The StressLess Camping RV Podcast is available on the website or your favorite podcatcher.
