It’s been a week since we got back from the Cayman Islands, and time has been playing tricks on me. Sometimes a week feels like a month, other times it feels like less than 24 hours.
This week has been a busy one—not just with training, schoolwork, and settling back into our RV routine, but also with adding a new adventure to our journey: Vlogging.
So many people ask us about our lifestyle, our travels, and our pickleball journey. What better way to share it all than through a YouTube vlog? I’m a serious newbie, but if there’s one thing I learned during COVID, it’s that I can pivot, adapt, and learn new things.
A Lesson in Adaptation
In the fall of 2019, Ryler got hired for his dream job—National Coach for Team USA (tennis, that is). We packed up, left Tallahassee, and his role as Associate Head Coach at Florida State University to start this new chapter. His job was to develop the best 15-year-old boys in the country and take them to tournaments worldwide.
I stepped away from coaching, went full housewife mode, decorated our beautiful new home, found great schools for the kids, and made friends in the neighborhood. Life was settling in nicely.
Then—bam! 💥 COVID hit.
Everything shut down. USTA tried to keep the coaches on, but with players unable to travel, it wasn’t sustainable. A few months in, Ryler and 20 other national coaches were let go on a Zoom call. Just like that, the dream job was gone—after only nine months.
What now? Time to adapt.
Out of nowhere, one of Ryler’s old junior tennis friends reached out. His wife ran an insurance agency in Newport Beach, CA, and they were looking for help. Ryler mentioned it to me in passing, not expecting it to go anywhere. But I said, “Sure, let me hear more about it.”
A few weeks later, I was on my first training call.
Huge shoutout to Carla, my boss, for taking me under her wing and showing me the ropes of being a real mom boss. She built a powerhouse Farmers Insurance branch with an incredible team. Learning something so foreign was tough—I had never done anything outside of coaching tennis and running our academy. But this was insurance.
I studied contracts, rules, sales pitches, and quotes. And then the competitive juices kicked in. Once I learned I could rank in sales, it became a game. And much to Ryler’s surprise, I got really into it—advising clients, problem-solving, and helping people with their insurance needs.
But the biggest lesson? I can do something totally different, challenge myself, and enjoy the journey of learning something new. So why would vlogging and editing be any different?
Join the Journey
Here’s our first longer vlog about life in the RV, what a day in our world looks like, and everything in between.
Subscribe for free and follow along as we navigate our RV + pickleball journey (and as I promise to get better at editing along the way).
Let’s do this! 🚀
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