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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!)
Happy Monday, family, friends, and fellow campers! I am writing to you from a small town outside beautiful Virginia Beach, Virginia following a fun, family-filled weekend. I'm reflecting on the weekend we had with a bit of angst about the time we took away from work. I'm trying to put in perspective the work-life balance we've created through this lifestyle for our readers. I think it's easy for people to see all of the amazing places we've traveled and things we've done over the past year and think that all we're doing is having fun. That couldn't be farther from the truth so let me try to explain.
We took a small detour from our strategic, race track-focused travel schedule last week as we made our way from Summit Point Motorsports Park in Summit Point, West Virginia to Virginia Beach, Virginia. This is the first time we've moved our Thor Outlaw motorhome without heading in the direction of another race track since we left Dallas at the beginning of June. Since we decided not to take the RV to The Ridge Motorsports Park in Shelton, Washington this coming weekend, we found ourselves with a three-week gap between events. Because we were on the east coast and all of Rob's family (on his dad's side) lives on the east coast, we decided this was the perfect opportunity to have some family time.
This past weekend was the first weekend since my birthday on May 29th that we did not find ourselves at a race track all weekend. We met up with Rob's sister, Erica, and her family to slow down for a bit and enjoy time away from the track. We hadn't seen Erica and her family for two and a half years, since she and her husband moved from Fort Worth, Texas to Virginia Beach on assignment from the Navy. The last time we saw them was at Carter's eleventh birthday party at Elevation Trampoline Park. Erica, her husband, Donald, and their son, Jason, had driven from Fort Worth to Oklahoma City for Carter's party shortly before they packed up and headed back to the east coast.
On Friday night we reconnected at Donald and Erica's house for pizza and to meet our newest niece, Kira, for the first time. She recently celebrated her first birthday and we hadn't had the opportunity to meet her yet.
On Saturday we visited the Norfolk Naval Station and saw many incredible ships. We can't tell you about them, though, because then we'd have to kill you! LOL. According to military.com, "Naval Station Norfolk is the world's largest naval station, supporting 75 ships and 134 aircraft alongside 14 piers and 11 aircraft hangars. The base houses the largest concentration of U.S. Navy forces. Air Operations conducts an average of 275 flights per day or one every six minutes. It is the hub for Navy logistics going to the European and Central Command theaters of operations, and to the Caribbean." Following our visit to the Norfolk Naval Station, we drove to Virginia Beach and went on a driving tour of the boardwalk. The weather wasn't ideal for a beach day so we opted to just tour the area by car instead.
Saturday night, Donald and Erica offered to watch the kids so Rob and I could have a date night for the first time in months. Since game three of the Oklahoma City Thunder/Houston Rockets NBA playoff series was on TV and we've barely been able to see the first two games because of our less than stellar internet connection, we opted to visit a local restaurant called Jose Tequilas Mexican Grill and Bar to grab a couple of margaritas, some chips, and queso and watch the game at the bar. If you ever visit a Jose Tequilas Mexican Grill and Bar, I highly recommend their avocado margarita and cowboy queso with steak, applewood smoked bacon, and fresh hot peppers. It was very good but also very hot! To top off the evening, the Oklahoma City Thunder pulled out the win in overtime to avoid being swept in the first round of the playoffs. (Here's to hoping they can even the series up tonight!)
Sunday morning we met Erica, Erica's mom, and the kids for a morning at the beach. Since they are beach regulars, they came prepared with beach chairs, umbrellas, and boogie boards. It was a beautiful, relaxing day of beach fun topped off by seeing several dolphins just off the shore! Following the beach, we headed to Donald's parent's house for burgers, hot dogs, and pool time. Carter enjoyed playing basketball with Jason while Edith enjoyed pushing Kira around the pool in the baby pool float. Rob and Donald joined the two teenage boys for a rowdy game of basketball in the pool. If you would have seen this game, you would have thought they were all teenagers - except the men eventually came to terms with their ages and ran out of energy.
The weekend was great! We really enjoyed family time - but it also felt a bit weird being away from the track and work. We feel a bit guilty taking time for ourselves, away from our business. I think that's the part that people don't see through our social media. Rob and I typically spend seven days per week fighting as hard as possible to build our business as fast as we can. We work all kinds of crazy hours, including well into the morning most nights as we communicate with suppliers in other time zones. It's what we have to do to build the life we want and we're both willing to put in the hard work to make it happen. The beautiful part of this full-time RV lifestyle is that we can be so close to our children even when we're putting in those hours to build our business. (Don't forget the fact that we're trying to build multiple businesses simultaneously.) But it's not like we spend a ton of quality time together every day. Rob and I are usually both working while the kids are doing school work and playing video games or watching YouTube. That's the part you don't see on social media. Just like any family, we have to make a conscious effort to have uninterrupted family time. And it doesn't happen as often as we would like! We just find ourselves somewhere cool and different when it does happen!
I'm a member of various Facebook groups for full-time RV living as I'm sure you are if you are also looking to go full-time. There are two questions I always see posed in the groups by newbies - what internet service do you use on the road and what do you do for work on the road? Today's blog is going to focus on the latter because, if I'm completely transparent, we haven't fully figured out the first one yet - even a year in!
COVID-19 has undoubtedly created a remote revolution. There are good and bad that come with that but, so far, I've mainly see good come from it. When we started our full-time journey one year ago (yesterday), people thought we were crazy (thus the Lackeys Be Trippin' name). Our friends and family had so many questions for us. What brought us to this decision? What were the kids going to do for school? What were we going to do with our house? But the most popular question was, what are you going to do for work on the road? To be honest, when we first started our journey, we didn't fully know the answer to that question. I remember Rob and I saying to each other, "we'll figure it out". For those of you that cringed at that, you're right. It was very cringe-worthy but we did (mostly) figure it out so hopefully that lets you continue reading without too much anxiety. 
We actually both intended on looking for full-time or at least part-time jobs while we were on the road. We needed (need) the health insurance since our 13-year-old son has Type 1 Diabetes, Epilepsy and Abdominal Migraines. We also didn't really have a fat nest egg to be able to go too long without regular income. Fast forward to today and we still haven't fully figured out what we're doing but neither of us have looked for full-time or part-time employment in the last few months. In fact, we're both certain it would be incredibly difficult for us to go back to working for someone else at this point. (But never say never, right?)
When we originally went full-time, we were almost a year into our business, Bison. Neither of us were working it full-time but we had grown significantly in the first year and knew we were inching closer to hiring someone. Since I wasn't entirely sure what I wanted to do with my life after leaving my job as Vice President of Finance for a marketing agency, I was the natural choice to take Bison on full-time. I had the time. However, after much debate, Rob and I both agreed that I wasn't the RIGHT person to take it on full-time. Bison was born from Rob's passion for motorcycles and relationships he had created with suppliers. Because of that, we made the choice to have him focus on Bison full-time. He left his job as Service Director for a couple of car dealerships in Oklahoma City to work on Bison full-time and begin homeschooling the kids in September 2019. 
After leaving my job at the marketing agency in July 2019, I joined a real estate investment company as their Chief Operating Officer. The job was extremely flexible and, while I did go into the office most days, I could take off in the RV for an extended period of time and still be able to function in my role. During my time there, we spent 18 days on the road with a trip to Barber Motorsports Park just outside of Birmingham, Alabama and Gulf Shores. We had a great time and work was able to continue like normal. Unfortunately, due to circumstances outside of my control, my time with the real estate investment company ended at the end of October 2019. I was officially on the hunt for my next thing going into the holiday season.
After much soul searching and several meetings with professional contacts, I decided to pursue my own clients for which I could do business consulting work. When I signed my first client, I formally created Caffeinated Consulting. While I was excited about my new adventure, clients don't just show up when you're building something new. It takes time and a lot of focused energy. I have spent the last eight months building a small roster of clients and advising them on all of their business needs, including accounting, finance, marketing and operations. I even went through additional training during quarantine to become a business broker so I could help my clients with selling their businesses and building value for their business until they are ready to sell. I work with my clients on an on-demand basis so there are no long-term commitments or dedicated hours every week. My work fluxes from week to week which is great for the life we are living on the road.
While I was working to build Caffeinated Consulting (did I mention it was a long, slow process?), I sparked an interest in developing a dropshipping business. Because I'm a firm believer in creating brands that support bigger missions, the dropshipping site I created was called Edie Kate (nickname for my daughter, Edith Katherine) and we committed to donating 10% of gross profit from the shop to charities that connect families to their babies in the NICU. (Our daughter was born 15 weeks premature at 1 pound, 14 ounces and spent 77 days in the NICU so it's something our family is passionate about.) Building the dropshipping website was fun and, while I still enjoy maintaining it, I hope to expand it to create signature products in the future versus only dropshipping. We are in the early stages of that right now.
Because I'm never tired of bringing on new things, I also committed to writing an e-book in April 2020 after connecting with a beautiful, brilliant digital nomad named Christina Voll in the Workew Slack group. Workew is one of my favorite sites for finding remote work, btw. I highly recommend checking it out if you're interested in going remote! Christina was in the process of developing a site for digital nomads to find resources to achieve remote work success called Rise Remotely. She asked if I would be willing to be a contributor to the site and I enthusiastically agreed. And then I freaked out! I had never written a book in my life. I wasn't good at writing. I started to doubt everything about my ability to write an e-book. Then I forced myself to sit down and just start writing. Now, I'll be honest, I still don't know if it's really all that good but I did it! I'm still waiting for feedback from Christina before the book is listed for sale but I'm proud of myself for stepping out of my comfort zone. I'll keep you all posted about when the book will be listed for sale so you can tell me if it's good or not. Please, be nice. Did I mention it was my first book?
That's a lot, right? Not for me! I swear it takes a lot for me to feel fulfilled with work. Earlier this month I started researching affiliate marketing and how to create a revenue stream through a website. I actually started researching it for Bison but ended up realizing it was more fitting for Lackeys Be Trippin'! That's when I created a website for Lackeys Be Trippin' and started writing blog posts. And because I don't ever do anything half ass, I committed myself to a 90 day blog challenge which started on July 10th. The theory is to create one blog post a day for 90 days to jump start your website traffic and begin earning affiliate marketing dollars. Here I am 18 days into the 90 day challenge and I've fallen a bit short with only 12 blog posts complete but I'm very proud of the progress I've made and continue to be committed to catching up and writing all 90 blog posts by the end of 90 days. Wish me luck! Btw, if you're interested in the details of how affiliate marketing works, I highly recommend checking Miles Beckler out on YouTube. He and his wife started blogging in 2009 and have created multiple blog sites generating millions of views and millions of dollars. He's committed to giving away the road map for free so people don't have to pay for courses or books to get started. His material was super helpful and did I mention free?
I guess the last thing I would mention is that Rob and I also rent our home out on Airbnb and VRBO as a short-term rental property while we're on the road. Now, this doesn't provide any true income for our family but it has allowed us to keep our dream home while we travel. It also comes with a significant amount of work which is another reason why I mention it. Depending on the week and number of guests we have in our home each week, I can easily spend 2-5 hours per week in overseeing the operations of that business. The operations includes accounting, coordinating with cleaning people, writing guest reviews, responding to guest inquiries and ordering supplies for the property. Those are all things I can do from afar. However, not everything can be done remotely. We are very thankful to have a great friend who has taken on the property to manage everything on-site while we help coordinate with her from afar. 
So there you have it - that's (pretty much) everything we do for work on the road. While we enjoy the entrepreneurship journey, I also understand that life is not for everyone. I simply present it as an option to all of the other blogs you will find out there focused on full-time and part-time employment. If you are interested in learning more, feel free to reach out to me at any time. I'm an advocate for entrepreneurship as I believe it's one of the best options for creating a flexible, remote friendly lifestyle.
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