Episode 1

So, I’m betting you’re wondering, “What is WiebengaLife & what does it mean?” Let me tell you, we are still trying to answer that question and there is a story I have to share to help you understand why even WE (Mark and Sarah Wiebenga) are still trying to figure it out.

It all started in 2013. . . Mark and I had become the running joke within our company for always being on a vacation. You see, when we had first seen the vacation club, we promote, we had been looking for a way to travel for the rest of our lives without going broke. You can see why we got uber excited to test our product when we figured out that very thing was possible. Up until that point we had had pretty marginal success business-wise, but were pushing to start a spark that would ignite into a flame. It was that year that we went on a 90 day run to get somehting going and, all of a sudden, had tremendous growth on our team. In fact, we had so much growth going on that the rest of the team started to really notice! I guess, because we had built the persona of being the people having more fun traveling, and that combined with “Killing It” business-wise, made our lifestyle look pretty awesome. Here’s where it gets a little out of hand though.

You see, we were just doing our own thing, you know, having a blast until one day I showed up to a local training (without Mark because he was working with a new team in a different market) and everyone starts shouting my last name when they see me. As I walked through the room I noticed people I knew and didn’t know shouting “WIEBENGA” right in my face left and right. I thought this was strange, but it IS my last name, after all, so I just walked to my seat laughing at all of them. I started hearing “WIEBENGA” being shouted by several people anytime everyone was fired up by the speaker and in the spaces of silence while the trainer was speaking.  I looked back a couple of times and even saw that someone was holding up a huge poster board with “WIEBENGA” written out on it!

The icing on the cake, though, was when the trainer, a good friend of ours today, finally stopped in the middle of everything and asked, “What is a Wiebenga?” I slowly raised my hand in the front row and told him, “It’s me. My last name is Wiebenga.” He said, “Let me get this straight, you have a bunch of guys just screaming your name every time they are fired up?” I said, “Yes. I guess.” That trainer still, to this day, shouts “WIEBENGA” at me every once in a while and it cracks me up! Looking back today, THAT was the point where we started to lose control. It was in that moment, that our last name was no longer just our last name. . . it had become a verb.

To Be Continued on Episode 2. . .