It takes a lot of guts to step out of our comfort zone, change our lives, and explore the world. However, the call of new experiences allowing you to expand your reach and learn something new is an opportunity that will be a shame to waste. Newlyweds Tyler Trout and Gabi Rivera-Trout, Creative Director for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Project Manager for City Bank, respectively, took a big leap to become globetrouters and travel around the world for 365 days. Tyler and Gabi share how they plan their trip down to the last detail. They say it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience and learn different cultures, get out of their comfort zone, and enrich their lives.
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Listen to the podcast here:
Exploring New Horizon As A Globetrouter with Tyler Trout and Gabi Rivera-Trout
As I was thinking about what to talk about for the show, I was looking back over some of the challenges that people continue to talk to me about, where they’re getting stuck. People feel like they’re in this never-ending story that doesn’t change. That’s because they’re comfortable with knowing exactly what to expect. They’re comfortable doing what they have always done. The interesting part to that is they’re not fulfilled. They’re not enthusiastic about their day-to-day lives. With that in mind, I wanted to talk about how new experiences change lives. It’s all about looking for the things that will make you smile. It’s all about looking for the things that you haven’t yet experienced but that you’ve always wanted to. The day-to-day stuff will always be there for you to fall back on. It’s the new experiences, the ones that you have to go after. They’re the ones that you must go out of your way to find. That’s the tough part because you’ve got to do something different. You’ve got to do something that you don’t typically do in your day-to-day life because we get comfortable in our day-to-day lives.
As you look back on your life, on what you’ve done so far, don’t wait to be disappointed and say, “I wish I would have done this or I wish I would have done that.” At that point, it’s too late. You missed it. Whatever this or that means to you, Nike says it best, “Just do it.” You’ve got to go out there and find it. I talk about this all the time. What’s your vision? What’s your passion? What’s your purpose in life? What are the things that you are so passionate about, that you will do whatever it takes to make it happen? I would talk about how these new experiences can change our lives. New experiences give you that opportunity to expand your reach, to learn something new. It helps to be passionate about it. Being passionate about going after those new experiences will make it happen. It takes commitment. It takes something different.
You should think about what it takes to be this lifelong learner. What I think about is, “I don’t want to get stuck with the skills that I have and that’s it, nothing more and nothing less.” A lifelong learner is someone who looks to expand their mindset, somebody who looks to gain new skills. When you continue to push yourself, when you continue to go after new and different things, you continue to expand your mind. People nowadays are investing in experiences rather than the typical materialistic things. It’s not always about that brand-new shiny car, this big electronics thing or whatever it is. It’s not all about the things.
In my family, what we’re focusing on is experiences instead of gift giving. Those experiences create those memories and expand your horizon. I was reading about this 80-year-old woman who signed up for a karate class. When the karate teacher saw her, what he said was, “Are you here to pick up your grandson or your granddaughter?” She said, “No. I’m here to take the karate class.” That’s what I’m talking about. She’s experiencing something new, something out of her comfort zone and something that she thought about doing for a while but never had the opportunity to go after. Experiences are what it’s all about. I have two very special guests with me to discuss this topic. They are near and dear to my heart. When you hear their story, they will be near and dear to your heart as well.
I have with me Gabi Rivera-Trout and Tyler Trout. They are The Globetrouters. Follow that hashtag because once you hear their story, you’ll want to hear more and more. For those of you who don’t know, Gabi Rivera is my daughter. I’m sure you know that because I’ve talked about it before. Tyler is her husband. I was talking about their beautiful wedding down in Mexico. I was able to get them to clear their schedule, which that alone is a difficult task, to come to the studio to talk with us. Welcome to the show, Gabi and Tyler. How are you guys doing?
Thanks for having us. We’re super excited to be on.
We’re very excited.
I’m excited to have you and I cannot wait until these readers get to know your story. Every time I think about it, I don’t know what to think. Why don’t you tell a little bit about yourselves? Gabi, we’ll start with you.
A lifelong learner is someone who looks to expand their mindset and seeks to gain new skills. Click To TweetAs Mama C said, I’m her daughter. My name is Gabi Rivera-Trout. We got married on March 30th. I’m 31 years old. I’m a Project Manager for Citibank.
I’m Tyler Trout. I’m a Creative Director for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. I’m soon to be the former Creative Director for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers because our goal is to quit our jobs and travel around the world. We will officially become The Globetrouters.
Tell us what that means. Why are you quitting your jobs?
It all started when Gabi and I first started dating. One of her extreme passions was to travel around the world. We both started talking about how amazing that would be. At that point, we had started seeing the spark in our relationship. It never hurts to save money anyway. That was the kickoff of us starting the conversation. It’s grown for the past few years of us saving. With doing that, naturally, the buildup keeps getting more and more and the passion keeps getting crazy. It’s an idea that started with Gabi. That’s one of her passions. The decision came from her.
We started dating in Spain too. Our relationship from the get-go has always been an adventure and exploring. That continued throughout our relationship. After I went backpacking around Europe for two months, I didn’t want to leave. I was thinking about different ways of how we could travel longer. It was not as uncommon as we thought it was. There were couples and individuals who did it. The more we read about it, we realized we could do this. If we put a plan in place, stuck to it and made some sacrifices along the way, we could make it happen. That’s where we are now.
You land these fabulous jobs and then you decide, “I’m going to save for a couple of years, sacrifice now and then do what most people don’t have the guts to do,” which is quitting those fabulous jobs and travel around the world. It seems that that takes a lot of research and planning. How do you even begin to think about planning a 365-day trip around the world? What do you do?
We Google a lot. It becomes your best friend. There are a lot of blogs out there that we’ve run into. We found other couples and individuals that have done these same things. You don’t hear about it all the time, but there are a lot of people out there who have done similar trips. They wrote books about it. They blog about their budget and how much it costs. That’s what started the whole thing. I did a lot of research, seeing if this was even a common thing that people do. I remember sending every article that I found to Tyler back in 2015 to try to get him on board with it.
Was that a hard sell, getting Tyler on board?
If we put a plan in place, stick to it. If we make some sacrifices along the way, we could make it happen. Click To TweetI’m a big adventurist but at that time, I wasn’t working with the Buccaneers. I was into the idea. I’m on board with anything that sounds like fun. When I got the job with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, I wanted to make sure that I got the most out of a job and that I felt the most comfortable or in a good spot from a growth standpoint. I don’t mind changing positions as long as I’m still gaining knowledge and feeling like I’m in a good position. That’s where I am now with Tampa Bay. I’ve built a family with them. It’s a very hard decision. I have a dream job, but this is a once in a lifetime opportunity that we’ve saved and planned for. We sacrificed for it for sure. When it comes down to it, we stuck to our plans. It’s almost perfect. Whenever we get this chance, it all works out. The stars align and you have no choice but to follow it. We’re excited about what’s to come.
Gabi, you said Google is your best friend and there are a lot of blogs out there. There are probably many readers that are saying to themselves, “That’s cool. I want to look into some of these.” How do you even come up with a budget? How do you know what it’s going to take? What is your strategy in terms of this 365-day honeymoon? Are you going budget shopping or are you going to five-star resorts?
We like to travel a little bit more on a budget. We don’t like to travel to five-star places. We use Airbnb a lot. We use Hotels.com. As far as the budget is concerned, based on both of our salaries, we started saving $2,500 a month for the past few years. We each put a percentage in to make sure that we met that and we’ve stuck to it. There are some blogs out there that tell you what the low end would be and how to travel on $50 a day. There’s a book that’s out there that is called How to Travel the World on $50 a Day by Nomadic Matt. It’s an interesting book. He’s traveled all over the world. We read that. It breaks everything down by cost by country. You realize that people do this on a budget and it’s not as hard to travel as other people might think. A lot of people think about traveling and they’re like, “I could never do that because I don’t have enough money, or I’ll never be able to get to that spot.” What I’ve learned through my research and planning is that it’s obtainable. You have to make some sacrifices. In the low end, some people travel on $20,000 a year.
Gabi opened my eyes to this. Where you live now and what you spend per day end up being a lot more than what you’d spend on a day to sleeping at Airbnb, eating, going grocery shopping in another country and living for a day. It’s equivalent or more than it is here in the United States than it is somewhere else. Your money can go a lot farther than you think. When you think about it that way and you break it out per day throughout the month of what you spend now, it will open your eyes to what you need to save in order to be happy but still do all these things you want.
A lot of people don’t realize how much they spend and how doable it is. I was reading about this 21-year-old girl that traveled around the world and went to every single country. She’d been traveling since she’s twelve years old with her parents. Her goal was to be in the Guinness Book of World Records. What is the overall goal that you want to accomplish from this adventure? Are you trying to get into the Guinness Book of World Records? I think you both have a record already.
We both have different goals. I’m going to keep track of all of our spending and budget everything. Maybe we’ll try to blog and post pictures about our experiences and show people that these are the things that you can do in this country on a budget and it’s affordable. It’s important for people to see and experience different cultures. Having those experiences sometimes add more value than maybe some work experience that we might have. It’s a different perspective on life. To see how different people live is the main thing that I’m trying to get from it.
Mine is coming from a creative background. I do a lot of design work. I oversee the look and feel of what we do from a football standpoint. From a creative standpoint, I hope to gain a lot of photography and videography experience. The overall goal is to be able to show people that this is attainable. If you save a little money and you plan for it, this is feasible. You can do this. Don’t be afraid of it. Look at all the things that you can accomplish or the cultures you can visit and gain insight that you’ve never had before. That is probably one of the most fulfilling things you can imagine. It’s meeting other people and experiencing a whole new way of thinking and a whole new way of life. That has me sold already.
You bring up a great point because now that we have the internet, the world is much smaller. You can interact with anybody, anywhere and anytime. When you are traveling around the world and learning about other cultures, you become much more valuable to companies going forward. They’re potential customers. The insight that you learned from being with them in their own environment, in their own country, is invaluable to companies. From a professional standpoint, companies are going to look at you like, “They’ve traveled all around the world.” They’re going to think two things. A) You know how to plan, you know how to create a vision and put it into place. B) You know how to put a budget together and stick to it. You are learning more about all different types of people. The value that you provide to them based on your experiences seems invaluable. Have you thought about all the different countries that you want to go to? Do you have a list of those? What is your strategy in terms of picking where to go for the year?
People have different dreams; we need to chase and follow ours. Click To TweetWe’ve talked about the areas we want to start and experience. When we talk to people about it, even our family, the first instinct is, “What are you guys doing? You guys have such good positions. You’re supposed to be career-minded and goal-oriented.” You raised us the most incredible way, almost too good because now we want more adventure. You hit the nail on the head because we were able to get to where we are now based off of experience, our knowledge and our résumé. To be able to give that up, experience the world and different cultures and have the guts to do so, we think that from a valuable standpoint, we become a lot more attainable. We want to work with someone who values that. If it doesn’t work out and we’re looking for jobs and someone doesn’t think that’s the right decision, maybe that’s not the right position for us anyway. If you look at it that way, I believe that we’re making a decision not just because we want to travel, but because we think it’s going to make us more complete from not only a personal level but also a career level. To answer your question about different countries, we thought that we were going to go to South America first and then go over to Africa. One of the things we initially booked was an African Safari for two months, but then Gabi did some serious research.
The countries we’re visiting are determined on this two-month trip that we found. What we’re trying to do is flying to big hubs. When you find bigger hubs around the world, it’s a lot cheaper and you can find a lot of good deals. Our original plan was to start in South America. Based on flights going to Africa, we had to come up with a new route. That’s the great part about this trip. We don’t have a set plan to do anything until we book stuff. We were able to find some good deals from Orlando to Paris for $330 a person. That was a no-brainer. We’re starting in Europe and working our way through the Middle East and down into Africa. That’s how we’re picking places. It’s based on cheap airfare that we can find. Our goal is not to spend more than $400 on a flight. We’ll see if we can stick to that.
Sometimes you can’t even go to Newark for $400, so I’d love to see that. When you were talking about the cultures and learning things new, I made that same decision in my life to take an overseas assignment, specifically for learning another culture and becoming more marketable. As you enter the business world again once you come back, you’re going to find companies that see the value in the experiences that you obtained and the marketability and flexibility that you’ve had in order to achieve this goal. Our initial thought as parents are, “How can you quit the jobs that you have? Are you crazy?” I’m sure you recall those conversations. As it got closer and closer, both your mom, your dad, my husband and I all think of it as, “It does take more guts to put this plan in place than it does to send a few résumés out and find another job.”
What the audience should take away from this is, regardless of what your vision is and what your goal is, it takes planning. You’ve got to put that plan in place, sacrifice, commit to it and then you’ll see it come true. You are starting your journey and it’s going to be super exciting. I always talk about challenging the status quo. There are certain expectations that people have. You go to high school and get a job. You go to college, graduate and get a job. Those are the norms. You are redefining your own norms. What does it mean to you to challenge the status quo?
For us, what it means to challenge the status quo is exactly what this trip is all about. We just got married. What you’re supposed to do when you get married is to buy a house, have a kid and start a family. That’s what a lot of people do and I have nothing against that. We just have different dreams. Our dreams didn’t align with what the norm is. What we’re doing is we’re taking a yearlong honeymoon. Chasing that dream is us challenging the status quo from a routine perspective.
In America especially, everyone is so ingrained in, “You work and do the best in your job. You try and get higher and higher within your position, which is great.” I’ve had that mentality ever since I was little. It had everything to do with sports and growing up. Challenging the status quo would be to not be so work-minded all the time. I was working until 9:00, 10:00, trying to get stuff done and that was okay in my mind. Challenging the status quo this time is forcing myself to get home at a decent time, letting myself not be as work-heavy and start enjoying life outside of work. That’s what started this whole process. We need more experiences in our lives. We need to be able to enjoy it for what it is outside of work. Challenging the status quo is traveling and experiencing this and not focusing on work so much.
One is stepping out of your comfort zone. We’re going to be in countries that have a different culture and different way of life. It will be challenging, but it’s going to be a great experience for us as a couple. It’s something that we’re never going to forget.
It’s enjoying life. Your generation has made that choice. It’s exciting to see you put this into play. When you think about this journey, there are so many things to consider when you’re embarking on such an adventure around the world. What are some of the things that you’re either worried about or you had to plan for in order to mitigate any potential problems or concerns that you might have? What do people need to think about?
You have to be street smart so that you aren't taking advantage of some people. Click To TweetTyler has probably different worries than I do. I am the planner and the project manager. I’m thinking about our trip, our plan, where we’re going to go, what we’re going to see, where we’re going to stay and what our daily budget is going to be. The thing that I worry about is not being as prepared as I could have been. I’ve been reading about all these different packing lists that people get and what they bring, the essentials and stuff that maybe you don’t think about on a normal vacation. Since we’re going to be living out of backpacks, there are things that we want to make sure that we have. The preparation part is making sure we have everything, the right clothes and shoes, is one of my biggest concerns. From a budget standpoint, I want to make sure that we’re sticking to a budget. Tyler’s probably annoyed with me talking about the budget and packing because that’s been the main focus. That’s my biggest concern. Tyler brings me back down and reminds me that they do have things in other countries as well. If we need something, we can buy it.
Gabi has different worries than me. Mine probably revolves a little bit more around safety. I do know that other countries are safe. A human being is naturally a good person anyway, but it’s naïve to say that all people are good. All it takes is one person to try and take advantage of you somehow, so it would be naïve to say that we aren’t concerned with safety in certain areas. That is something that we have done research on. We’ll be prepared for that as well.
It’s both of those things. If I go to New York for a weekend, my suitcase is bigger than the backpack that you’re having for a year. I can’t even relate to how you guys are going to live off of how many outfits. It doesn’t seem like it’s a lot, even though you roll them up and make them seem like they’re a lot more than what they are. The packing is what stresses me out. When I see that backpack, I know that I can’t do that. When I went on Survivor, they said that you could only have one suitcase, it had to be less than 50 pounds and we were going to be there for over 40 days. My suitcase weighed more than 50 pounds. It was not good on the first day at the airport. You have to worry about safety. I watch Criminal Minds way too much, and all those movies where the people are traveling all over. That’s why they make these movies, they make you watch them. There are certain things that you have to be aware of. You have to be those street-smart people. People are going to be nice to you, but you’ve got to also have your antennas up all the time so that you aren’t taken advantage of.
I read this one thing about this couple that went around the world and never took a flight, which I thought was pretty cool. I guess they went on cruises. There are many different ways to travel. You guys are going to blog and people are going to be looking for the pictures and all of the insight that you’re going to provide them, with not only what to do and what to see in other countries but also how to get to other countries on a budget. There are so many people that want to travel but haven’t put that plan in place because they don’t think that they can afford it. For your last message to your readers out there, where do they begin? What do they need to start doing? Are there specific blogs that they should be reading about budget travel or how to make things happen like that, that you can share with them?
The cruise couple is from Florida. They’re great. I reached out to them a ton with a bunch of questions on Visas, cell phone plans and stuff like that. Their blog is called Roaming Around the World. They have been traveling for a few years. They have a pretty much nailed-down path. They work on the road and travel around. They’re a good couple-blogger to follow. They post everything about their budget, where they go and what they did. Another one that I’ve read is How to Travel the World on $50 a Day by Nomadic Matt. That’s another good one. This guy has been all over the world and tells you how to travel to all these different countries and cities under $50 a day. He has a lot of neat tricks and tips in his book. Those are two that I would highly recommend if you were looking for budget travel advice.
For the most part, it’s also about being proactive. Gabi had to reach out if she had a question about anything. It’s reaching out and trying to form those relationships. If there are questions in different things, other people that have experienced it can help you out along the way. There’s an infinite resource in Instagram, Facebook and even Google. Go get the wealth of knowledge out there.
We had an exciting show. We talked about getting out of your comfort zone, pushing yourself to do something different and experiencing something new. I know from my own experiences that when I went against the norm, when I was able to do something different, it felt amazing. We heard from Gabi and Tyler Trout as they are planning for an experience of a lifetime. They’ve spent the last few years leading up to their yearlong trip around the world on a budget. I’m sure that you’ll want to follow their adventure along the way. It’s #GlobeTrouters. Gabi, can you tell our readers how they can follow your journey on Instagram? If they have any questions, how do they get in touch with you?
We started an Instagram account. It’s called @GlobeTrouters. If anybody has any questions on travel or advice, we’re more than happy to help in any way.
As a mother, I’ll be watching with excitement for all the things that you will encounter. It’s the different cultures, the sites and the wonderful experiences. In addition, I’ll be worried for 365 days. Have that on your mind as well. Thank you both for sharing your story and your journey. It will soon begin. There are so many things that you’re going to tell the readers. We’re super excited to hear all about it. We’re going to have another great show for you. I am super excited. I’ll be traveling and doing the show on the road. I will have another power couple, not as powerful as the Gabi-Tyler couple but it’s pretty powerful. They come in second. My peeps come in first. I will be talking to Sierra Dawn Thomas and Joe Anglim. This is the best couple from Survivor Season 30: Worlds Apart. It’s an episode that you will not want to miss.
I do this show so that I can provide you with some valuable things that you can take away and use right away. I always talk about being a lifelong learner. Take one thing that you learned from this episode and run with it. I’m always looking for topics. Go to my website at www.CarolynJRivera.com. There’s content. Leave me a message. Set up a free call with me. If you missed any episodes, you can read them by clicking The Carolyn Rivera Show tab from my website. Helping you achieve more than you ever thought possible is my specialty. You need to push yourself. Take yourself to that next level. Get out of the status quo and experience new things. Believe, commit and achieve. That’s the secret sauce you’re looking for. This is Mama C, signing off.
Important Links:
- The Globetrouters
- Hotels.com
- How to Travel the World on $50 a Day
- Roaming Around the World
- @GlobeTrouters on Instagram
- #GlobeTrouters – Instagram hashtag