We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Tim Gillespie a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Tim, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about the things you feel your parents did right and how those things have impacted your career and life.
They let me dream big without making me feel weird about it, trusted me enough to let me learn the messy way, and sprinkled in enough love to make sure i always had a safe place to land, even if home was sometimes on wheels. If parenting had a highlight reel, they’d definitely have made the playoffs.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I took a beautifully chaotic path to get here. I started out like most people: convinced adulthood would be organized, predictable, and calm. Turns out, I was hilariously wrong, so I leaned in the other direction — wheels, adventure, invention, and a mild caffeine dependency.
These days, I run two main operations. The first is FUVADS, where I strap advertising onto tiny electric vehicles that look like they escaped from a Pixar movie and then let them roam around like moving billboards with personality. It’s guerilla marketing, but with seatbelts and zero villainy.
The second is AI Travel Guru, where I teach everyday humans (and especially full-time travelers) how to use AI without needing a computer science degree or a hug from IT. RV life is complicated enough — I just help make the tech part feel like a helpful co-pilot instead of an out-of-control autopilot.
What problems do I solve?
I help brands get noticed in ways that don’t feel like another boring ad assault.
I help travelers use AI to save time, money, and sanity while on the road.
And most importantly, I help people say “Wait, you can do that?” at least once a day.
What sets me apart?
I’m the only guy you might meet who could pull into a campground on a Sunday, help you generate an AI travel plan on Monday, and roll past your business in a billboard trike on Tuesday. My work lives in the intersection of curiosity, practicality, and “let’s see if this works.”
What am I most proud of?
Building a life that refuses to be boring, helping people embrace new tech without feeling intimidated, and accidentally becoming the poster child for “Yes, you can reinvent your life after 50.”
What should people know about me and my brand?
I’m here to explore big ideas, simplify scary tech, keep marketing fun again, and remind people that life is better when you stop taking yourself so seriously and start taking chances instead.
If you want innovation without the ego, creativity without the cringe, and someone who will actually answer the phone (unless I’m in the desert without signal… but I’ll text a smoke signal), then we’re probably going to get along just fine.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
My social media audience was not built so much as assembled, like IKEA furniture, but with fewer instructions and more swearing.
I started out just documenting things I genuinely cared about — travel, tech, tiny electric adventure vehicles, AI tricks that feel like wizardry, and the circus that is my daily life. I figured if I was already out here doing questionable but entertaining things like strapping ads on futuristic trikes or asking a robot to plan my road trips, I might as well press “record.”
At first it was just family, a few curious friends, and one guy who followed me by accident and hasn’t figured out how to leave yet. But eventually people realized:
A) I actually explain useful stuff,
B) I don’t take myself weirdly seriously, and
C) there might be something mildly unhinged but wildly helpful coming next.
My strategy if we can call it that was simple:
• Be curious out loud
• Share wins and hilariously human failures
• Teach what I learn while I’m learning it
• Make tech feel fun instead of terrifying
• Treat followers like people, not statistics
• And most importantly… don’t be boring
The audience grew because I didn’t try to build an audience. I tried to build conversations, experiments, and occasional digital mayhem that people wanted to be part of.
Advice for anyone starting out?
1. Start before you’re ready. The internet rewards motion more than perfection.
2. Pick a lane but paint outside the lines. Be known for something, but surprise people often.
3. Let personality do the heavy lifting. You don’t need to be louder than everyone, just more you than anyone else.
4. Teach, entertain, or make people feel understood. Bonus points if you do all three.
5. Consistency beats theatrical perfection. Post the thing. Then post the next thing.
6. Remember — the algorithm is not a diety. People follow people, not formulas.
7. Have fun or the audience can smell it. Forced content is like bad cologne. Everyone regrets it.
Bottom line:
Show up. Share honestly. Learn in public. And sprinkle in just enough chaos to stay interesting.
The audience will find you. Mostly because you forgot to hide.
What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?
Most of my best clients have come from what I call the “accidental networking strategy,” which is a fancy way of saying: I just start doing cool stuff in the real world and the business part sorts itself out.
When you’re rolling around in tiny electric adventure vehicles with billboards on them, or showing someone how AI can plan an entire RV trip in 30 seconds, people just walk up and say things like:
“Wait… what is that?”
and later…
“So… can you do that for me too?”
Beyond that, my biggest sources are:
• Curiosity bait — doing stuff that makes people say “tell me more”
• Social media proof-of-life — not polished ads, just real experiments in the wild
• Word of mouth on wheels — literally, when your marketing vehicle moves, so do conversations
• Helping first, selling later — I’ll fix the problem, then tell you I have a service for that
So the short answer?
I don’t hunt for clients… I cause scenes that clients walk into willingly.
It’s unconventional. A little chaotic. Highly effective. And I plan to keep not acting normal about it.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://fuvads.com/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@AIRVLife
