We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Marilee Blair. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Marilee below.
Marilee, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?
I first got a taste of being a storyteller and being a reporter on television for Prep Sports Live reporting on highschool football highlights and North County News reporting on local news stories, while interning for San Diego The CW and ABC 10 NEWS in San Diego back in 2011-2012. And I had always tried to figure out how to get back into that world when I found how YouTube became so big and my passion has always been about travel. I realized I could still be a storyteller on camera with my own show where I could help people plan their amazing dream vacations with my show, which is when I created the MarileeTravels YouTube Channel in March 2023. My MarileeTravels Youtube Channel is where you get to explore the world 1 video at a time with me, Marilee Blair! I share all my travel tips, itineraries, the history, and important information on the destinations I’ve been too, so you don’t have to do all the hours of research I have already done. And so you can see what I have seen out of the 56 countries and countless cities I have traveled to all over the world so far. I also share some travel hacks of how I paid less for some trips, and share recommendations of popular things to do in each country. Traveling is my passion, obsession, addiction, source of my mental health, happiness and its truly all I think about, so I want to be a voice of all the incredible things you get to do on amazing once in lifetime vacations. I release new New MarileeTravels Episodes every week on youtube.com/@marileetravels And in April 2024 I had hit the amount of subscribers and views needed to officially become a business partner with Youtube. So today I’m so proud to say that I am a Paid YouTube Business Partner, which I’ve heard it isn’t easy to accomplish in your first year in a saturated youtube market. But I am determined to make it as a big travel youtuber someday, and to just be able to get paid by youtube to do what I love and talk about what I love while helping others make memories with their loved ones all over the world is truly a blessing that I am so thankful for.
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.
Professionally I’ve been an Event Planner for 15 years and a Trip Planner for a little more than a decade which ties into my youtube travel business perfectly. And I hit my 2 year YouTube Business anniversary this past March which is exciting. My focus and goal for the future is to be a full time travel youtuber, so to see what it has turned into from starting it part-time in March 2023 to where it is now and being an official YouTube Partner has been a dream come true to get to this first level. If I can get to the first level that is the hardest level for most people to even hit then I know I will make my dreams come true to eventually do this full time. So again my Travel My MarileeTravels Youtube Channel is where you get to explore the world 1 video at a time with me, Marilee Blair! I share all my travel tips, itineraries, the history, and important information on the destinations I’ve been too, so you don’t have to do all the hours of research I have already done. And so you can see what I have seen out of the 56 countries and countless cities I have traveled to all over the world so far. I also share some travel hacks of how I paid less for some trips, and share recommendations of popular things to do in each country. I specialize and am known for my travel tips, travel itineraries, travel education/history on the places I have visited along with sharing where to eat, stay, things to do, and also share travel review videos right now. I’m most proud of my planet hollywood cancun youtube video since thats the video that has performed the best and to have become a youtube business partner officially that was such a big dream for me, so to achieve that goal was really exciting and I look forward to growing my channel, subscribers, views and more as I continue. My travel videos are extremely unique especially in the travel tip ones I do because I share history about the country, things to do, what to eat, where to stay, and travel saving tips, which I haven’t really seen other travel youtubers do all of what I do.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
Creating a travel youtube channel hasn’t been the easiest journey, there have been a lot of ups and downs as with any business. And so much work goes into these videos that people don’t ever see, so when some of my videos don’t perform as good as I thought they would, I tend to get hard on myself and don’t understand why. And sometimes people don’t write very nice comments, which everyone warned me that as a YouTuber you will get bullied and have people tear your hard work apart, so that was tough to get used to in the beginning. But now I focus on the positive comments and the people that are actually getting value from my videos. When I see comments that say my video helped them have an amazing trip without the stress they were worried about, or they want to stay at the same place I stayed because my video helped them, that makes it all worth it. If I can help just 1 person per video have an amazing trip of a lifetime, then I’m doing what I was meant to do and is really the whole purpose of why I created this travel show. All I want is to help people plan their trips, so hearing people enjoy my recommendations or itineraries makes it very rewarding during the tougher times. And having a great support system helps too. But no matter what the most important thing is to stay consistent with youtube, even if I don’t get the views I want per video, I can’t miss a week of posting a video because it will affect my youtube business and I don’t want to ever lose accountability. I still have a long journey to go to get the amount of subscribers and views I want to have, to be able to do this as a full time business, but again as a part time youtube business owner, I am proud of where it is and will continue to go.
What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?
I think because travel has been part of my passion for so long and I would constantly post on social media about it, that helped a lot. People knew I was a professional event and trip planner too, so that helped since I got paid to help people with their actual trips. So that sets me apart from other travel youtubers because I had experience in the travel industry before making my youtube videos. And it was what my friends and family knew me for too. The common question my closest friends and family would always ask is “when is your next trip?” or where are you traveling next?” so my community knew that was my reputation to help them plan epic trips. And my family and friends would always ask me if I had been somewhere they wanted to go to help them plan their trip itinerary or give them recommendations, so by making the travel youtube channel it helped me solve that problem for them that instead of making lists, why not just make a video of it to help them and everyone in the world, so they don’t have to do the work I have already done, and I could just send them the video of the place they want to go. And thats when it became a win win. The most common question I get asked now is Marilee have you been to this country or this city? because my community wants help with building that particular trip, which is a great feeling to be asked to help someone in the industry you love so much.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://marileeblair.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marileetravels
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarileeTravels
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marilee-blair-2792b534
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@marileetravels
Image Credits
@marquisj_photography