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When we started this full-time journey over two years ago, we did what any family looking to go full-time would do. We started scouring the internet for resources. We read countless articles, joined every Facebook group we could find that had full-time RV in the title and we started interacting with those “like us”. Here we are two years (and three months), 31,802 RV miles and 44 states later and I’ve come to the realization that we aren’t like most full-time RV families. We don’t fit the mold and here’s why. I love reading people’s stories - why did they choose (or not choose) to start living full-time in an RV? I recently posed this question in a Facebook group and got the spectrum of responses. Some people went full-time to slow down, some to create new life experiences, others to rid themselves of stuff. And of course there were also the stories of people who didn’t choose this lifestyle but were forced into it due to a lost job, change in housing, or a multitude of other personal challenges. One thing was certain - we were not the norm. Did we consider all of those advantages (and disadvantages) when making the decision to go full-time? Absolutely. Were we living many of them as our primary objective? Nope.  So why did we decide to go full-time? It’s kind of a long story (that happened in a relatively short time frame) but what it boiled down to was that we were doing it for our business. We started a custom motorcycle gear business in September 2018 as a side hustle. We wanted to make a buck while spending time with our motorcycle community trackside. We also saw a need for high quality, inexpensive custom motorcycle suits at a reasonable price point. By early 2019, it was clear that our business was growing quickly and we would need to hire someone to help run the business (while we kept our busy, corporate executive-level day jobs). When both of our jobs took sort of dramatic turns in the summer of 2019, we decided it might be time for one of us to focus full-time on the business. We started downsizing our monthly expenses to make this transition - the first of which was buying the RV and selling the house (although we ended up keeping and renting the house for the first year and a half before finally deciding to sell it in April 2021). After a couple of unexpected turns of events, both myself and Rob found ourselves unemployed and focusing full-time on the business by September 2019. During our strategic planning session for the 2020 season, we realized the RV life lended well to growing our business geographically by being trackside at as many tracks as possible in as many states as possible. The vision for what we’re doing today was born.  When I started reflecting on our first two years on the road, it was clear to me that we were blazing a very different path than the rest of the community. We started traveling to build our business. We were arriving at the race track on Thursday or Friday, spending all weekend networking with riders and growing our business, and packing up on Sunday evening or Monday morning and starting the trek to the next race track. Sometimes that was a two hour drive and sometimes that was a twelve hour drive (or, in the case of our west coast road trip, 20+ hours for a couple of the events). Depending on the length of the travel in between weekends, we may or may not have time to do anything fun in between. Before we knew it, we would be set up at our next race track and ready to work through the weekend. While our community counterparts were set up at nice RV parks, we were either boondocking trackside or in a Planet Fitness or Cracker Barrel parking lot or set up trackside with only power (or maybe generator power only for the weekend). Only one race track we attended in 2021 had full hookups - boy were we spoiled!  On the rare weekend off or week without two or three days of travel, we would find an RV park to set up at. However, we often found ourselves held up in the RV for two or three full days just trying to catch up on work. I distinctly remember one time when we were in St. Augustine, Florida at a beautiful RV resort (fancy name for fancy parks) just staring at the pool from the RV windows while we worked. In fact we were in Florida three times this year and never even went to a beach! If we were lucky (or smart), we would stop working around 2 or 3 o’clock in the afternoon and find somewhere to go or something to do for the last few hours of the day. Of course this ruled out most museums since most of them close at 5 or 6 pm. We often found ourselves just exploring the sights or grabbing dinner somewhere with (hopefully) a view. The kids were often so sick of traveling that they just wanted to stay in the RV. We fought them on this most of the time but, every once in a while, we gave in and let them stay while Rob and I grabbed a date night out on the town (much needed when you live in 400 square feet with two children).  We’ve traveled almost 40,000 miles in the RV in the past two years. We’ve visited 44 states - coast to coast. We’ve seen almost every major landmark in each state or at least something notable in each state. But we never spent substantial time in any one place. We were at Mount Rushmore for less than an hour. We bought a seven day pass to Crater Lake in Utah (which is unbelievably beautiful, btw) and we only spent a few hours there. We were constantly jumping from place to place to take it all in and then back on the road we went. Thankfully for us, our kids would get bored easily. An hour or two at each place was more than enough for them. They were grateful to see it, leave and then move on to the next thing (or spend the next few days held up in the RV while we traveled).  The other day I sat down to really think about how we could grow our social media channel and why we weren’t picking up steam like other channels and I came to the realization that we may be trying to speak to the wrong audience. We aren’t like other full-time RV families. We live at the race track most weekends, not nice RV parks. We don’t work less now that we’re full-time. If anything, we work more. We see a lot of the country but we don’t get to spend much time in any one place. If you’re looking for a traditional full-time RV family, that’s not us. If you want to follow our unique adventures as we attempt to balance full-time RV living, build a business and homeschool our children on the road, we would love to have you follow along! If you have a passion for motorsports, you may also want to follow along. We visit race tracks across the country and are able to answer any questions you may have prior to visiting each track. Whatever your reason for being here, we’re happy you’re here - and look forward to connecting with you in person one of these days! (We aren’t those weirdos that don’t want people to talk to them either - no offense, weirdos.)  
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When we set out on our RV adventure, the main purpose was to build our business, Bison. Bison is a custom motorcycle racing gear business we started in September 2018. We provide motorcycle riders and racers with bespoke suits and gloves. We also sell several ancillary items, including undersuits, knee pucks, and apparel. We started the business on a part-time basis while we were working our full-time, corporate-level jobs. We started the business to meet a need (high-quality, custom leather suits at affordable prices) and to make an extra buck.
The business grew much quicker than we expected and by August 2019, we were faced with the decision to hire someone to handle the business or quit our jobs and do it ourselves. After what now seems like a divine course of events, Rob and I both ended up quitting our jobs and going all-in on Bison. When we sat down to have conversations about how we wanted to market the company in 2020, we were faced with a decision to either grow by adding dealerships in the area or by expanding our reach geographically without adding dealerships. We developed a grassroots marketing campaign centered around the MotoAmerica racing schedule. We decided to load the family up in the RV, follow the MotoAmerica racing schedule, and hit up club-level events along the way.
We started our adventure in February 2020 by attending the season's first CMRA event in Houston, Texas. The next stop was originally Dayton Beach, Florida for MotoAmerica pre-season testing but we opted to forego that event since our sponsored team decided not to go. It simply wasn't worth the cost at that point. Instead of Daytona Beach, we headed to New Orleans, Louisiana for the second CMRA round. This is when all hell broke loose with COVID-19. The CMRA event was canceled on the first day as the Governor of Louisiana implemented a limitation on the number of people that could gather for a public event. Meanwhile, the Daytona Beach event we originally planned to attend was also canceled. Thank goodness we didn't decide all that way and spend all that money just to have the event canceled on the first day!
Over the next two months, we quarantined, re-grouped, and questioned everything in life as our huge business investment seemed to crumble before our eyes. After wallowing in our sorrows for the first few weeks of quarantine, we decided to gather ourselves back up and re-focus. We spent the next few weeks, re-planning our trip, investing in new product development, improving process efficiencies, and re-designing our website. When it was time to get back on the road in May, we were structured much better for growth. We hired a part-time virtual assistant to handle all of our daily processes and used the SBA loan funds to order inventory to sell on the road. After a HUGE outpouring of support for our products at the first event at Hallett Motor Racing Circuit in Jennings, Oklahoma, we knew we made some wise investments.
The growth since that event has been big. We went from selling an average of five suits per month in the first four months of the year to eleven suits per month in the last three months. Revenue increased by 81 percent over the same time frame. We released a new glove design that is unlike anything on the market and we invested in a large SEO and PPC marketing campaign to increase our reach beyond where we will physically reach over the remainder of 2020.
The great news about all of this growth is that we are much closer to being able to sustain our full-time RV lifestyle than we were when we started this journey 13 months ago. The bad news is that we have new challenges to deal with on the road. When we first hit the road, we had very little product that we carried with us. Since all of our suits and gloves are custom, we only carried a couple of each with us. After selling out of our gloves and undersuits at our first event in May, we quickly realized the demand for these products trackside was high. Since we are focused on becoming the best custom motorcycle racing gear business in the industry, we designed our first colorway, The Roots design. This was a custom Thor.1 glove design that we would offer for a limited time until we created the next colorway design. We placed a fairly large order of both The Roots colorway and men's and women's one-piece and two-piece undersuits. 
After what seemed like an eternity, we finally received our stock products near the end of July. Now we were faced with a new problem. What would we do with all of these items in our small space? If I'm honest, we haven't quite figured it out yet (as you can see from these pictures) but we do have a plan to reduce some of our undercarriage cargo (personal items) to make room for the business stock. We also have a longer-term plan to order additional stock, have it all shipped to our centralized shipping and receiving location, and have a limited number of items shipped to us periodically from that location. Unfortunately, ordering that much stock is very costly so we have to work up to that point. Here's the other issue - that's just one of our businesses. We are getting ready to launch products for both our Lackeys Be Trippin' brand and our Edie Kate children's clothing brand. We have designs being developed for both now. The plan for those two brands is mixed. We will probably stock most of the items at our centralized shipping and receiving location while carrying a few Lackeys Be Trippin' items with us on the road in case anyone wants to buy them when we meet up. We also have a future brand in its infancy stage that will be geared towards the RV lifestyle and will require much more storage space than we will have to offer on the road. We will have to come up with a creative solution for that as well!
So what's the hardest part about running our business(es) from our RV? Storage! Living in an RV full-time is already like playing a daily game of Tetris - try adding the need for product storage! Now I know why most full-timers look for service-based work on the road. The good news is that I've realized we don't need nearly the stuff we originally thought while on the road. We've purged our personal items twice in the past year and it seems we'll need to do it at least once more before we can reach the optimal personal/business balance. If anyone has any storage tips, we would appreciate it if you would share them with us! Leave them in the comments below. Until next time - go fast, be safe! (That's our motto for Bison if you didn't already know!)
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