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

Hi Alexandra, thanks for joining us today. Being a business owner can be really hard sometimes. It’s rewarding, but most business owners we’ve spoken sometimes think about what it would have been like to have had a regular job instead. Have you ever wondered that yourself? Maybe you can talk to us about a time when you felt this way?

Van Life is beautiful and unique, my husband Frankie and I have traveled to so many gorgeous and remote places and seen more of the world in the last 4 years than many people do in a lifetime. We are blessed to have found this way of life and can easily see ourselves doing it for a long time. But, trying to run a business on the road and earn enough income to pay for all these epic adventures does come at a cost.

We originally set out with a bank account flush with savings with no plans of working on the road. Van life was supposed to be a 1-year escape from the rat race we found ourselves in working for big corporations in New York City. Within the first few months of travel, two things were clear. First, we absolutely loved living in a van and life on the road. The adventure and excitement of finding new places to camp, the awe and wonder when we came across a new landscape that brought us to tears with its majestic beauty, the wonderful people we were meeting, the new friendships we were making, and the feeling of freedom were undeniable: we wanted to keep living van life well after the year was up. The second revelation was that our stacked savings account was dwindling quickly. If we wanted to keep traveling, we were going to have to figure out how to earn an income along the way.

Both Frankie and I had been creating YouTube videos for years prior to this adventure but without much financial success. We decided to double down on creating content for our newly branded channel, FnA Van Life, and start really trying to make a go of it. Within the first 6 months of making content, we were finding enough financial success to keep going, tell our companies in New York we would not be coming back, and doubled down on the full-time content creator idea.

By the middle of our second year on the road, we realized we needed to figure out how to earn more because YouTube income alone wasn’t going to be enough to pay for our van life lifestyle. We wondered if we should give up and of back to the 9-5 world of steady paychecks. There is definitely an appeal to clocking in and clocking out. We were spending countless hours working on our videos and everything that goes into running a business for a fraction of what we had been making in New York.

But as we persevered and continued to work on FnA Van Life, opportunities seemed to present themselves at the perfect times. Brand deals, licensing agreements, requests for user-generated content also known as UGC, modeling gigs, and more seemed to fall into our laps. The harder we worked, the more opportunities presented themselves. We started our van life podcast which brought even more opportunities and the continued growth of our social media and YouTube channels meant that brands were excited to pay more to work with us.

We are so glad we didn’t quit, because yes, working for ourselves is so much more work and mental energy than our traditional jobs in NYC. There is so much more pressure and stress thinking that if we don’t get something done, we might not make our earnings goals for the month. But with all these added pressures also comes the freedom of working for yourself. We set our schedule, we make time for adventure, travel, family, our hobbies, and most of all, it allows us to continue exploring new places where our regular jobs would have us trapped in one place.

Alexandra, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

We are Frankie and Alex, a full-time van life travel couple based out of the United States. Since starting our adventure in 2019 we’ve accomplished a lot. Not only have we self-built 2 vans aka tiny homes on wheels from scratch and are now working on renovating an RV, we’ve also traveled to some amazing places. We’ve been as far North as the Arctic Circle in Alaska and as far South as Panama City Panama. We spent a month in every country in Central America and 4 months in Mexico. We’ve explored 41 states in the USA and 5 provinces in Canada. Together with our adventure pup Paco, we’ve logged over 1326 days as full-time van lifers.

Since getting on the road with no business plans at all, to fund our adventures, we’ve built a successful YouTube channel, podcast, and digital media portfolio. We work with brands large and small to promote products we believe in, and are so grateful for the community support we receive through our Patron account. Our goal is always to share the good, bad, frustrating, and fantastic sides of van life. Before we started traveling, we only saw the best parts of van life and didn’t see any of the struggles or challenges until we were on the road experiencing them for ourselves. Our goal is to make sure that everyone entering the lifestyle knows exactly what they’re getting into and has the tools and resources to overcome any challenges they face living van life.

There is nothing more satisfying than when we get a message from someone saying we inspired them to follow their own dreams and get on the road.

How’d you meet your business partner?

Not only are Frankie and I business cofounders, we’re also married and expecting our first child. We met on the dating app called Bumble, where the woman has to initiate the conversation with the man within the first 24 hours of swiping yes on each other. Frankie’s profile was all about sports and hiking and adventure, so naturally, I asked him where his favorite hiking trail was. It was clear immediately we had a connection, sending each other sunset and flower images and planning to go on this big hike together. Our first date ended up happening on a Sunday afternoon in Brooklyn, New York. We met at Barcade for video games and draft beers and continue to explore the city for the next 11 hours together. On that first date, Frankie let me know that he was going to be leaving in a few months for a big adventure traveling to as many snowboarding mountains as he could. He advised me not to get attached, but also invited me to come along with him!

A few months later, he delayed his trip to earn more cash for his travels and continue to see where our relationship might go. A few months after that, I drafted a spreadsheet with all the details of what Frankie needed to save to be able to travel, he was so impressed but noticed something was missing, I wasn’t on the sheet. With another quick swipe, I showed him my own spreadsheet with my own plan to save enough money to travel. After that, we started working together to build our first van and were on the road together by the end of the year.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Our first goal in van life was to snowboard every resort mountain in North America. That was 83 mountains in a single season. We started hard and fast on the East Coast and within a month of non-stop travel, sometimes visiting 4 mountains in a single day, we made our way to Montana for our first west coast mountain. By the time we made it to Tahoe, California, we had 69 mountains under our belt. We were definitely tired, our bodies were aching, our gasoline budget was exploding from all the fast travel, our relationship was being tested. This was Frankie’s goal, I had been happy to help him achieve it and snowboarded many of the mountains myself but was feeling more like his stage mom than his partner. Getting the van clean and ready to drive, making sure his gear was hanging to dry, feeding him food and snacks to make sure he had enough energy to ride and also driving the many hours a day necessary to reach this goal. Plus this was only my second season snowboarding ever, I was still learning while Frankie was climbing to the peak and taking on the most difficult trails on the mountains.

When COVID shut all the mountains down mid-season, we thought for sure reaching this goal was going to be impossible. We also worried that van life was going to be over too, would we still be able to travel and explore with a global pandemic changing the whole world? We decided to bunker down for a while in Washinton with Frankie’s sister which is where the idea for FnA Van Life was born. At the time we had both been making videos and content for our own channels, now it was time to work together to build our dream life. The goal of reaching all those mountains was over, but the adventure had just begun.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.fnavanlife.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/fnavanlife
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/fnavanlife
• Youtube: www.youtube.com/fnavanlife
• Other: www.tiktok.com/@fnavanlife

Image Credits
Frankie and Alex FnA Van Life