Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Audra Schroeder. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Audra, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with the decision of whether to donate a percentage of sales to an organization or cause – we’d love to hear the backstory of how you thought through this.

For every 25 CarCamp kits sold at full price, one CarCamp kit gets donated to a person experiencing houselessness and living in their vehicle.

For some of us, camping and sleeping in our cars is a treat. For others, it’s the only option. I have privilege as a person who has lived in a home and has used my car, budget and time for recreating, and who used my home, car, budget and time to start a business around car camping. As I work to grow this company and community it’s my mission to remember the folks who NEED this product, not just those who WANT it.

(As I write this I’m actually no longer living in a house. I’ve packed all my belongings into storage and am living the nomadic life traveling around via train and vehicle utilizing my CarCamp kit. Being alive is expensive and I’m passionate about helping folks remove themselves from the traditional system so they can find ways to save money and adventure at the same time – or just save money so they can fund their own lives, businesses and dreams.)

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

When I graduated college I wanted to travel. I had mounds of student loans debt and little money to my name, but I did have a remote job doing graphic design. I decided that I’d travel, work from libraries, and sleep in my car – a 2010 Subaru Forester. I packed the back of the car with a twin mattress, blankets and pillows and hit the road. The first night it was very apparent that I was too tall for the mattress-in-the-back-of-the-car sleeping, with either my head or legs dangling down behind the front seats. I also quickly realized the importance of organization in a small space when my clothing, food and cooking supplies ended up helter-skelter all over the back. Bed time was a night mare.

Rather than being turned off from car camping, I was set on finding a better way to do it. I decided I needed a sleeping platform in the back of the car to allow all of my nearly 6′ self to sleep comfortably on a level surface, plus create under-bed storage for my accoutrements. Using some second-hand plywood and 2×4 cast offs, I fashioned the platform, and wrangled the awkwardly-sized, heavy piece into the car. This first car camping sleeping platform did indeed let me sleep comfortably and organize my clothes and materials under the bed, but with my height, I had to drive with the front seat pushed forward to an uncomfortable spot, solving one problem but creating another. At that point I realized I needed a collapsible car camping kit that was also modular to allow for comfortable sleeping and driving. I also realized that if I was struggling with finding a removable car camping solution, that other people likely were as well.

From that point I began designing and prototyping CarCamp. Over 10 years the product has changed and evolved to now fit 20+ vehicles and counting. The design comes with adjustable legs to account for vehicles’ back seats folding at varying angles. It includes spacers for leveling the trunk space. It includes under-bed storage and two drawers with locking slides and drawer toppers for cooking, working, eating and more. It also it also comes apart into four pieces allowing folks of varying size and strength to install and move the kit without needing to phone a friend. And finally, my favorite part of the kit’s design is that folds and unfolds in under three minutes so that when it’s not in use it can be stored in the cargo space/trunk of the SUV/crossover, then easily unfolded to create the sleeping platform.

I’m really excited about the versatility of CarCamp and how accessible it will make car camping and traveling to many people. As a female product designer and builder in the outdoor industry, it’s also pretty neat to bring a solution to the table that is feasible for smaller, older, or less strong folks – no body builders required for a CarCamp install.

Things that I’d like people to know: I created this product to solve a problem for myself first. This wasn’t a get-rich-quick idea, this is something I’ve used and modified and improved for over 10 years and I still use my CarCamp kit all the time. I’ve been in 20+ states with the kit so far. I’ve also cumulatively lived on the road for at least two years so I enjoy being a wealth of information for folks starting out on their traveling, road tripping, car camping journeys.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

For starters, I loathe social media. I stopped posting on my personal accounts years ago and I swore I’d never go back. Well, queue me starting up a second business that needed eye balls on the product and I turned back to the soul-sucking social media machine.

When I started posting about CarCamp on Instagram I was trying to curate a really professional online persona. I wanted to make sure my photos and videos looked perfect, even though I had no equipment or editing knowledge – a fools errand. I made sure I was wearing cute clothes and makeup for the videos, and I’d stress out about how my voice sounded. I was posting for months with very little growth or engagement and I wanted to give up. I knew continual posting was necessary to feed the machine, but I’d be so full of dread on the days I planned to shoot content that I’d put off creating reels because I couldn’t make them perfect.

Then one day I decided instead of trying to be a perfectly put together influencer, I was going to focus on entertaining myself while I created content. I danced in the videos, made weird faces, sang (terribly), and talked in weird voices. I created a very imperfect reel and posted it. I felt good about the authenticity, but nothing happened. At least not right away. Then, two weeks later I woke up to several hundred new followers and tons of comments. The same thing happened the next day, and the next.

My social media audience is still relatively small, but it’s growing. And more than the numbers I see there, I’m working to remember the importance of being my authentic (really weird) self because if I’m not having fun, other people aren’t going to have fun watching videos and learning about my product.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

CarCamp has been a slow burn, completely funded by personal money. This means that I’ve invested in and grown the business at a rate that felt comfortably for my bank account. CarCamp has been my passion project for a decade and it’s really important to me that the passion remain in the project.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://gocarcamp.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gocarcamp/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gocarcamp/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@GoCarCamp