To date, the couple has collaborated with brands like wellness beverage Oaza and solar generator maker AcoPower, but they’d like to break into partnerships that align with other facets of their life.
Lieber described their Instagram as more of a side hustle or passion project than genuine revenue stream at this point. The couple said they haven’t met “a single vanlifer who doesn’t have some form of public-facing Instagram or Facebook.” With Hartrum focuses on the creative, editing photos and writing winding captions, while Lieber uses his background in data analytics to build out a strategy for the account and partner with brands. Then there’s social media, which is almost essential to the van life experience.
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“We really want to be immersed in the culture of wherever we are and what it feels like to live to there, not just visit,” said Lieber, who said they still make time for touristy moments, like sleeping under the stars in the deserts near Sedona, or learning how to boulder so they could see the Instagram-famous Funnel Arch in Moab. While no day is the same, Hartrum said there is a pattern: wake up and head into town to work in a coffee shop until noon, take the afternoon to go on a long hike, and then use the evening to hit local bars and restaurants with other vanlifers camping out in the area. They went south first, stopping in Asheville, NC, on their way to the Florida Keys, then turned west to explore hiking trails in Utah, Arizona, and Colorado. Hartum and Lieber have been on the road more or less consistently for about 9 months. No day is the same, but there is a rhythm The couple said they’re paying it off in $500 to $600 monthly payments. Lieber and Hartrum’s DIY construction cost was around $16k, including solar panels, building on a new vehicle that set them back $50k with an extended warranty. The high end closes in on $100,000, and blog posts detail hunts for $25k retro Volkswagens and $40k contracts with van refurbishing companies to fit out interiors. The everyday overhead for van life is pretty low - “just insurance, gas, and food,” Lieber said - but the upfront investment can be pretty steep. Her favorite part is the lofted bed, which overlooks a window that makes “whatever’s outside feel like our living room.” As for Lieber, he likes their study nook (yes, inside the van), which he said has a coffee shop feel and plenty of wall art. “After doing it, it’s really just like framing a house,” said Hartrum. The most challenging part was plumbing and electricity, Hartrum said, but her father watched a few YouTube videos and figured it out. Winter was spent in the Poconos, working with Hartrums’s father and brother, a pair of carpenters, to make the van livable. Lieber and Hartrum spent a month and half building out their living space before showing it to her family, who immediately intervened. Construction of the interior took two tries. The couple purchased their Ram 3500 in August 2020. Since August, the pair have been cataloging life in their compact living space on the Instagram account (a portmanteau of their names), where their 11,000-plus followers get a sneak peak of vanside yoga, desert campouts, and all the previously mundane things that happen in between. “Then the pandemic sprung up and allowed us to work from anywhere.” With his full-time job in wealth management at Goldmach Sachs, it felt impossible. “This might be weird to say, but my dream is to live in a van,” Lieber remembered Hartrum telling him on their first date, back in 2019. The vanlife hashtag on Instagram contains 11.6 million posts, many of them boiling down to the same elements: landscapes of the great outdoors, slideshows of diminutive homes, and musings about how remote work has provided the freedom to travel the world. What started as a niche culture for rugged nomads evolved in the 2010s into a lifestyle for millennial social media creators, spawning a cottage industry of tips on traveling solo, building a kitchen from scratch, and decorating your mobile home like a tiny Anthropologie.