Many people dream of turning their passions into a YouTube career, but few ever take the leap. Darryl Hodgson is among them. Since 2022, the former coast guard has been building a popular YouTube channel – Do it With Darryl. On it, he shares his passion for all things marine, crafting and adventure with a rapidly growing audience.
Here is the story of how Hodgson decided to launch his content creation career, and what aspiring YouTubers can learn from the challenges he’s overcome.
Quick Facts
- Darryl Hodgson is a Canadian YouTube creator.
- He launched his channel in 2022, after years of working in the marine industry and the coast guard.
- On Do It With Darryl, he records his sailing adventures, his journey rebuilding his dinghy, and new projects.
Keep reading for the full story!
For this series of blog posts, we sat down with some of the most successful creators at Tasty Edits. Here, they share their experience and expertise with you.
Contents
Finding Inspiration Among Content Creators
Hodgson’s love for the ocean has been inextricably linked to his career.
“When I was in the coast guard, we would patrol all of the area between Vancouver and Alaska, doing search and rescue,” he recalls fondly. “Before that, I had a couple of tiny businesses. I also worked in the marine industry. I still do, I’ve been a sailmaker selling sailboat sails for 14 years now.”
It was as part of his work as a sailmaker that Hodgson first started to work with influencers.
“I started surrounding myself with influencers and hanging out with them, and I actually became friends with a bunch of them. We do this annual boat show in Annapolis and that really got me involved,” he says. “I got to see what they’re doing, and I looked at that and realized that they’re having more fun than I am.”
Launching Do It With Darryl
Spending time around influencers made Hodgson reflect on his own career: “I was often stressed out and too busy to enjoy certain parts of life. And I just said: “I need to make changes and try something new and exciting that lines up with my number one hobby. That is basically when I said: ‘I’m going to launch a channel.’ ”
That was in late 2022.
Choosing a niche was easy for Hodgson – his passion and his expertise lay with boating. Plus, he already had connections with many influencers in this space.
“I started out by videoing my trip to Mexico, when I went down to visit Sailing Parlay Revival, a big YouTube creator whose channel records his journey repairing a catamaran damaged by Hurricane Irma to get it ready to sail through the Caribbean.”
A fun collab of Darryl’s with yachting creator Parley Revival.
Fine-Tuning a YouTube Strategy…
For Hodgson, a bigger challenge than choosing his initial niche was figuring out which angle to take with his content.
“I was thinking I could copy what everyone else was doing – driving around in a boat and filming some stuff,” he explains. “But I soon realized that my videos weren’t the right quality. I’m a dude with a camera – it’s probably not going to work out.”
Instead, Hodgson started focusing on working with industry partners and bringing in existing communities. One upcoming project is to test specially-made seats for military boats, for example.
In this sphere, he can leverage his extensive knowledge and experience in designing and building boat elements, from anchor storage to entire cabin interiors. He already showcased these skills throughout the latest season on his channel, in which he rebuilt his dinghy.
That wasn’t originally the plan: Darryl did so because the boat had suffered an accident. This cut short his sailing plans – and became the foundation for a pivot. The new DIY angle was attracting a broader audience, and the team realized that these viewers stuck around for Darryl’s screen presence.
The high-polish yachting niche wasn’t Darryl’s thing. The nitty-gritty of building and operating boats was a better fit.
So what had started out as sailing content became about boat construction, and increasingly focused on Darryl’s personality and dreams of adventure. Dream of Dinghy, as the channel was called for a time, became Do It With Darryl.
… and Building a Business
One thing that has helped Hodgson overcome many of the challenges that all aspiring YouTubers face, is this: He never approached his channel as a hobby. “I wasn’t surprised at the amount of work it takes,” he says, “because I always thought of it as a business. We have to do what it takes to get it going.”
Among other things, this involved re-investing into the channel, by hiring video editors and a channel manager. “We wanted to get the production quality to a point where it was consistent and felt right.”
Having a channel manager helped Hodgson figure out some finer aspects of his channel analytics. For instance, he discovered that many of his viewers came from Spanish-speaking regions. So he added Spanish subtitles to his content – and found his view durations and retention rates increased significantly.
Navigating the Future
What’s in store for his channel is up to Hodgson’s creativity, his business acumen, and his audience’s investment in him as a creator. His viewership is now growing rapidly, and he has begun to collaborate with more companies.
Today, the new dinghy is mostly complete. Darryl and his team are looking to create a more dynamic, adventure-focused channel. They’re now preparing to explore a variety of activities, from learning to bake and cook (“Cooking with Darryl!”) over travel in other countries to adventurous things like climbing mountains.
Apart from renaming the channel – and branding it more heavily with Darryl himself – there are plenty of data-driven changes going on behind the scenes. For example, with the wider audience in mind, the channel team is overhauling the descriptions.
With all hands on deck, Do It With Darryl is moving under full sail and running before the wind.
FAQs
Darryl Hodgson is one of the creators behind Do It With Darryl and I Dream of Dinghy, a YouTube channel dedicated to boat trips across North America and rebuilding a dinghy.
Darryl Hodgson is located in Canada.
Darryl Hodgson is a YouTube creator who specializes in boating content. His channel records sailing trips across North America, boat maintenance, and – currently – the rebuilding of his dinghy.
I Dream of Dinghy, now called Do It With Darryl, is a popular boating YouTube channel. Creator Darryl Hodgson, who used to be in the Canadian coast guard, uses it to share his passion for sailing trips along the North American coast and the rebuilding of his dinghy.
