In 2017, Sophie Hilaire graduated from The Wharton School with an MBA in Operations and moved to New York City to work as a consultant at McKinsey & Company. Before all of that, she was a Captain in the U.S. Army for six years.
"I grew up in the middle of nowhere Ohio, so to me, living in the city was a rite of passage," she tells CNBC Make It. "It was great but I also felt like during the time I lived there, I was basically kind of a tourist."
After a year of constant travel for work and spending only the weekends in her NYC apartment, Hilaire decided to take on a much different kind of challenge — climbing Mount Everest.
Hilaire already had experience climbing mountains like Mount McKinley in Alaska, Cotopaxi in the Andes Mountains and Chimborazo, the highest mountain in Ecuador.
She started training while still working full-time. When it came time for the climb, Hilaire was able to take advantage of the months-long sabbatical program offered at McKinsey.
"At the surface, I've always been drawn to lofty goals — ones that stretch the body and the spirit. I wanted to find out what would happen if I shut my laptop for two months and focused on this sole, raw experience while living in nature," Hilaire says.
"When I did that, I had this epiphany that I wanted to spend more time in nature and Central Park to me wasn't really the level of nature I needed."
Hilaire returned from Nepal in the summer of 2019 and decided not to renew her lease.
"On the plane ride home, I knew I couldn't go back to life in New York and that I had to be closer to nature," she says. "That moment of knowing launched the next chapter — van life, homesteading, and loving myself. The mountain did transform me. She gave me direction and that's been the real gift."
Her job allowed Hilaire to be anywhere, so long as she was able to fly out to meet with clients around the country. That gave Hilaire flexibility to travel. But then the Covid-19 pandemic hit and Hilaire found herself without a home and without a clue of where she wanted to head to next.
"I thought, 'I'm not ready to pay rent or buy a house, so why don't I move into a sprinter van and continue to visit different places and see where I want to land?'" Hilaire says.
"I always knew I wanted to get a van just to have, but this kind of felt like a no-regrets move because I thought, 'Why don't I just get it now, so I don't have to pay rent anywhere and I can keep on traveling?' I didn't know how long the pandemic was going to last."
Hilaire purchased a Sprinter van she found on Craigslist for $29,900, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. The van had been partially built out already but still needed a lot of work. Hilaire added a bedroom area, bathroom, IKEA cabinets, solar panels, and a desk. She did most of the work herself and estimates she spent about $18,500 in renovations.
Hilaire traveled all across the United States while living and continuing to work full-time as a consultant.
Parking the van for life in a tiny Home Depot shed
Hilaire eventually quit her job at McKinsey & Company and lived the van life full-time for two years. But, in 2022, she decided it was time to settle down.
As a first step, Hilaire switched to boutique consulting which meant she wasn't as client-facing and didn't need to travel for work. She went from making around $300,000 a year at McKinsey, not including bonuses, to making significantly less — under $100,000. Hilaire says it didn't bother her.
"I wanted to have my own trees and have somewhere to experience four seasons. I wanted to have a garden. I wanted to be grounded and I wanted to build a life with someone, too," she says. "It was really nice because I got to spend all that time with myself and develop a relationship with myself for the first time."
Next, Hilaire had to decide where she wanted to set down some roots. She thought about a homestead — a house, usually a farmhouse, with separate buildings on a big piece of land. Hilaire says she wanted a homestead to "learn more about self-reliance and just be connected to a piece of land," but she wasn't prepared to buy one just yet.
At the same time, her friends had been trying to convince her to move to Kentucky. The family owns a hunting property about an hour from their house where Hilaire could stay. The land was big enough for Hilaire to park her van, and she'd have free rein of the 16x40-foot Tuff Shed they bought from Home Depot for $23,000.
"I drove over there in my van and I was blown away by this place. I saw it probably at the worst time because it was the end of winter but I saw how beautiful it was," Hilaire says.
Hilaire decided to stay and says it was the perfect situation because it would give her the ability to save to buy her own land one day. She set her sights on transforming the Tuff Shed into a tiny home that her friends could use even after she was gone.
"Huge houses did not appeal to me after living in my van. It just felt more comfortable to me and reasonable to have a smaller space," she says.
The shed had two lofts, outside walls and subflooring and was being used to store random hunting items. Hilaire got to work renovating in the summer of 2022.
Hilaire says she spent roughly $53,535 transforming the shed into a living space inspired by the Sea Ranch community in California, an unincorporated community known for its timber-frame structures. She added skylights, a kitchen, open closets, several decks, a bathroom, a utility closet, and a bed with cardboard boxes underneath for storage.
Hilaire says her first night in the shed was quiet and restorative.
"It was exciting but it was also so relaxing and just really peaceful," she says. "It was just so nice being in complete silence."
Hilaire spent a year renovating the shed and lived there for five months before she moved to a homestead she owns with her now-husband.
"In some ways, it's sad, but in other ways, it was a beautiful thing. That shed took me exactly where I wanted to go," she says. "I didn't want to be in this shed forever."
When the Army vet first met her now husband, some of their dates included working on the shed's renovations.
"It was important for me while we were dating to see if we could work together on projects. I wanted someone who didn't necessarily need to be so great at it but we should have fun doing it," Hilaire says. "We quickly realized that we found the one."
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