We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jonnie Helfrich a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Jonnie, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What sort of legacy are you hoping to build. What do you think people will say about you after you are gone, what do you hope to be remembered for?

As I near retirement, I’m overwhelmed at times with memories of how this all started and my hopes for the business in the future. Unbeknownst to me at the time, the path to running my own whitewater rafting company started when I was just three-years-old. It was then that my family started canoeing. That led to my getting my own boat at age eleven and my first job in the whitewater rafting industry at age sixteen.
I remember every company for which I worked and every river I guided from then until 2001 when, with my husband, we started A Helfrich Outfitter, a whitewater rafting and flyfishing business in Oregon. He is a third-generation guide and outfitter.
I started small … one raft, one small truck and trailer, one guide. Helfrich McKenzie Rafting now has nine rafts, three 15-passenger vans and trailers and employs eight-ten additional guides.
To create my rafting business, I gleaned the positive aspects from each of my past experiences and tried to avoid the negative. Having worked as a guide and in rafting management, I had a lot from which to base my own decisions.
Many of my choices are made knowing that they will represent me, my own family’s connection to rivers and the out-of-doors and the 100+-year river running legacy of the family into which I married … all tall orders that I believe I successfully filled.
My hope is that I’m remembered as a woman who ran a business with the utmost in integrity, who held to her word, who worked as hard as any of her guides, who did her best to insure each guest had a safe fun trip, who treated her guides with respect and appreciation, who added special touches to the trip experiences to make them memorable, who was involved with her local river community to bolster area tourism for the benefit of everyone on the river and who raised a daughter who is capable and excited to follow in her mom’s paddle strokes.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Much of this I covered in my legacy question.
I got into my industry rather organically, having grown up as a river runner. I went from riding in the middle of a canoe while my parents did all of the paddling to becoming my dad’s bow partner in his canoe to getting my own C-1 Jr at age 11, a C-1 at age 12 and building my own kayak at age 13. I went with a friend to a meeting of eastern US whitewater rafting companies and was hired by one of them to start working that coming summer. From there, I’ve never looked back. River running has been a big part of my life and identity for most of my life.
In 1988, I met my now husband on a multi-day river trip in Idaho. I moved to Oregon in 1989 and worked for river companies here and in Idaho. In 2001, we realized that one of us should stay home to raise our children. As Summer approached, I couldn’t imagine not being on the river, so A Helfrich Outfitter was born. I run the whitewater rafting portion of the business; my husband, the fishing part.
My rafting business grew from a one-woman gig to a business that employs 8-10 guides each season.
We run half-day and full-day whitewater rafting trips on the McKenzie River and scenic float trips on the Willamette River. We also run multi-day trips on the John Day and Owyhee Rivers in eastern Oregon. Our son bought his grandfather’s permit and runs multi-day trips in the Fall on the Rogue River in southern Oregon.
I am detail oriented, so one of my “superpowers” is working through complicated logistics to make every trip run as smoothly as possible for not only my guests but for my guides as well. Doing so frees everyone up for having a fun safe river experience. Since most of our guests are outside of their comfort zones when they are outside on the river with us, my guides and I try to attend to every need (even the ones they don’t know they have) so their experiences are positive memory-makers. I’m a “people-person”, so I really enjoy chatting with folks who call. I think my personality even shows with the guests who communicate solely online. My communications are detailed, so they know I care about their experiences.
I am proud of the facts that I built the business from nothing into a well-respected company, that people can depend on my word, that my guides are skilled and caring and that I’m able to hand my business over to another woman, my daughter, a fourth-generation guide and outfitter.
Last year, she and I worked together to create a refreshed name, logo and website to better reflect the future. I’m excited for what it holds.

Any advice for managing a team?

I was raised to work hard, to do my best and to treat everyone with respect. Those are pretty good tenets on which to build a business and manage a team.

I’ve never asked a guide to do a job that I wouldn’t do or haven’t done in the past, and with 50 years in the business of guiding, there’s little I haven’t done. I’m out there daily helping to do anything and everything to help the trip run smoothly. My guides know that I’m up early and to bed late doing my best to insure great experiences.

As a guide and an educator, I’ve never been a fan of administrations being cloistered out of sight and passing down rules and regs to the worker bees that are untested, untried or nonsensical. I try to make sure that everything we do has a purpose, a good purpose, that leads to great experiences. When we need to try something new, we chat about it as a staff, and I ask for feedback from the guides and our guests. If it improves things, we stick with it; if it doesn’t, we tweak or scrap it.

I genuinely respect people. My guides know it, feel it and appreciate it. There are times when I have to “be the boss” and fix problems, but I make sure to handle each situation as respectfully as possible. My goal is to help my guides grow professionally and personally.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

Consistency.

I had been a river runner for 25 years when I met my now-husband. I was from the east coast; he, from the west coast. We didn’t know about each other’s boating histories or family stories. We did see in each other, though, a common love for rivers and the out-of-doors. Five years later, we married; three years after then, we started our family.

My family of canoeists (I was the only convert to decked boats and rafts) had always found our joy and connections to friends and each other on our river trips. So for me, that’s what being together on rivers meant … the camaraderie, the inspirations of awe, the bliss. It’s what I want our guests to experience.

My husband’s family had been in the business of guiding for decades. Marrying into the name was an immediate boost to my reputation. I have particularly high standards for myself, but I knew that I must also maintain high standards as to not sully the name of my “new” family.

Along with running fun safe trips, I am involved with our home river’s Chamber of Commerce, our local guides association (the oldest, continually active guides’ association in the US) and in our local destinations marketing/managing organization. Being recognized as an industry representative and proponent has increased the scope of my reputation.

All along, I have maintained a consistently-high level of service to our guests, respect for my staff and involvement in my local river and tourism communities.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.HelfrichMcKenzieRafting.com
• Instagram: helfrichmckenzierafting
• Facebook: Helfrich McKenzie Rafting
• Yelp: A Helfrich Outfitter

Image Credits

West Coast Action Photos for the whitewater rafting action shot.
All others are from my own cell phone.