We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Allison Helfen. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Allison below.

Allison, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Do you wish you had started sooner?

I started creating YouTube videos before you could earn money on YouTube. I had a personal channel and I posted videos of our two golden retrievers to share with our friends and family. If only I had known back then (2000) the earning potential for dog videos.

Then in 2013, I started a boating blog (www.boatingjourney.com) to document our journey of buying our first boat. At that time, we owned a wine shop and we were hoping to sell it soon, so we could buy a boat and live on it. My husband Scott and I finally sold the business in 2015 and began our search for our first boat. However, since he had never owned a boat before, we decided to buy a 31′ weekend cruising boat to make sure he liked being on a boat. We found the perfect boat in 2018 and started our YouTube channel for @BoatingJourney so we could share our adventures with his parents (originally our intentions were not to be content creators). Soon after, we sold our house to prepare for our next purchase, a liveaboard boat.

At the same time, I went back to work in the marine industry as Head of Marketing for one of the largest marine dealers on the West Coast. We sold the 31′ Bayliner and a few months later, we bought a 4087 Bayliner motor yacht, We spent the next 18 months exploring Puget Sound and the beauty the PNW has to offer. In March 2020, I accepted a VP position in St. Thomas and we put the boat up for sale. What we didn’t know then, was the impact covid would have. The boat sold quickly, the island remained closed (so I never did move) and now we had the itch to move south.

Along this entire journey, we continued to make videos, upgrade our equipment, but we still didn’t consider ourselves content creators. If we could go back in time, we would have invested early on to ensure our videos were professional from the very beginning. In 2022, we moved to Fort Lauderdale, FL with the hopes of finding our liveaboard boat. Unfortunately with the cost of hurricane insurance and slips, we probably won’t buy a boat for a few more years. I’m still in the marine industry, working as a CMO for 26 North Yachts. At the same time, we continue to produce weekly content which include tours and adventures and our subscribers has grown to over 14,000.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I created the Boating Journey blog because we read lots of non-fiction books about people who have left the rat race and are sailing the world and we wanted to document our journey. At the time, we owned our wine shop that we opened in 2005 and when the recession hit in 2009, we dreamed about sailing away. It was books that kept our dreams in sight. After we sold the business in 2015, we set out to find our first boat.

My husband Scott and I started our YouTube channel in January 2018. I think one thing that sets us apart and many of our followers have mentioned this, is that we are genuine and real. We are not trying to be cinematic producers, but we do want to share our journey. We thought we would buy our 3rd boat easily, but now we have ran into another obstacle with the price of insurance and slips. Basically, it’s almost 5 times the cost here in Florida than it was in Seattle, WA. But we are committed to the channel, so now we attend boat shows and do boat tours, we share our boating adventures and our travel journeys.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

Our goal is to retire and live on a boat. Where that takes us, we’re not sure. Sailing around the world sounds romantic, but the reality it, it’s hard work and it can be very scary. One of our first goals is to do the Great ICW Loop and explore the eastern US. From there, we will explore the Bahamas and the Caribbean. It may not be a lifetime adventure, but we’ll definitely liveaboard as long as we possibly can.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

I’m not sure if this is what you are asking, but I will share this. There are many channels out there, that have well over 100k subscribers and we’re not trying to be any of them. When we do boat tours, we want to capture our initial thoughts of the boat. Just as if you test drove a car for the first time – you wouldn’t research and rehearse that. So we wanted to document how we viewed the boat upon our first encounter. Yet, there are so many critics out there that compare us to the 100k+ channels that specialize in boat tours. Our tours are not meant to be sales videos, nor are we trying to sell the boat. We simply want to capture our thoughts about what we like and dislike personally. But every week, there is always a couch warrior waiting to pounce.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.boatingjourney.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/boatingjourney
• Facebook: www,facebook.com/boatingjourney
• Twitter: https://www.x.com/boatingjourney
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/boatingjourney
• Other: TikTok: www.tiktok.com/boatingjourney

Image Credits

Allison Helfen