Rising Stars: Meet Jim and Cara Hocking

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jim and Cara Hocking.

Hi Jim and Cara, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers.
We were the typical American family chasing the American dream…until July 2021. We had a large house. We had nice vehicles. We had too much stuff. Our life revolved around long hours at work and shuffling our children from one activity to the next. Most nights our family was split up into different activities, and when we weren’t doing activities we were spending all of our time doing upkeep and maintenance on our house. Our kids were growing up fast, and we felt like we were letting our time with them slip away.

We started to question the life that we were choosing to live. Five years earlier we had talked about taking a trip across the country in an RV as a family, but when we found out we were pregnant with our 4th child we decided to build our dream home instead. We had everything we thought we wanted, but we weren’t happy. We couldn’t stop thinking about what could have been…had we taken that trip. The conversations grew. We still had time but we knew we had to take action. We started searching for a skoolie that was already converted. We’ll never forget the Sunday morning that the listing popped up and Cara nudged Jim to wake him up at 6 am. One week later we flew out to Salt Lake City, Utah to pick up our bus and drive it back to Iowa.

The next month we took a family trip to Texas on the bus, and we loved it. After we got back we took a leap of faith and decided that we were going to take an epic year-long trip across the USA with our children, visiting as many states and national parks as we could. We put our house up for sale and started selling everything. It took us over 4 months to sell everything and get our bus ready to live in. On July 26th, 2021 we drove away from our neighborhood and our old life to start a new adventure in our bus.

Advance to today, we have visited 48/50 states, explored 42/63 national parks, and have had over 200 different backyards. We have learned about history, science, nature, and cultures. We have made friends with people from all over the country and the world. We have created countless family memories, and we love spending our time and money on experiences instead of stuff.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
We tell everyone that there are a lot more highs than lows with this lifestyle, but we still have our share of challenges.

Our biggest challenge has been mechanical issues with our bus. Old buses are cheap to buy, but expensive and time-consuming to fix. We have had 2 major mechanical issues in two years (one transmission related and the other engine related) and those two issues cost us over $25,000 to fix.

Sometimes it can be challenging to find places to stay, but we have become much better at this over time. There are a lot of apps and resources available, plus over time we have built a nice network of people across the USA that have offered us places to stay.

Medical care can be a challenge. We were used to having insurance that covered everything and was accepted everywhere. We still have insurance, but our plan is different and we need to do a little more research before choosing a provider to make sure everything is covered.

Living in a tiny space with 6 people also has its challenges. It is harder to get work done and easier to get on each other’s nerves when we are around each other 24/7. We have also adjusted to this over time, and we joke that it isn’t that much different than when we were in our house.

Being away from family and friends back home can also be a challenge. However, now we make the most of the time we do get to spend together. For example, we have been staying with Jim’s parents for the past two weeks and that is more time than we typically spent with them in a year even though we only lived a couple of hours away. We have also met a huge network of other friends and travelers on the road that we meet up with regularly.

We have also attended multiple skoolie events in the past two years where we have met other families and friends.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
We create promotional content (videos, photos, reels, posts, stories) for multiple brands and businesses, both for our page and the brand’s page. We have built a social media following of over 310k across multiple platforms (138k Instagram, 143k Facebook, and 32k TikTok). We also serve as talent for multiple brands where the brand uses our family for modeling and acting for their promotional material.

We are a family. We are comfortable in front of a camera. We travel the country full-time. We also happen to live on a bus. Those factors alone create multiple opportunities for us to stand apart from others when it comes to promoting brands in a fun and unique way. Jim also has a sales and marketing background, and Cara had her own photography business for 12 years, and that experience helps us immensely in this type of work.

Risk-taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
We took a risk when we decided to sell almost all of our belongings and move into a bus.

However, after talking about the potential worst-case scenario (which was that bus life would not work out and we would just move into another house) we felt like it was a greater risk for us not to take the trip. It was a strange feeling because we knew it was different and unconventional, but it also felt right. We knew we would never regret deciding to spend more time together as a family. Now this lifestyle feels completely normal to us.

We also took a risk when Jim decided to leave his job a few months into the trip so we could start our own business from the road as content creators. This has also been tough with a lot to learn, but we know the work we are putting into our business today will pay off for us down the road. Plus, we love having control over our work and our schedule.

Pricing:

• We offer 1-1 hour-long coaching sessions to anyone interested in how to get into this lifestyle. We charge $100 for the session for both of us ($75 if just one of us) and no question is off limits (we are an open book). Link to coaching session info: https://www.thehockingadventures.com/about-2
• If you are a brand and interested in partnering with us, you can email us at [email protected] and we can send over our media kit.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.thehockingadventures.com/
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/thehockingadventurebus?igshid=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thehockingadventurebus
• Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/@thehockingadventurebus
• TikTok: http://tiktok.com/@thehockingadventurebus

Image Credits
Cara Hocking