Helene Sula shares her international adventures because the voice behind her eponymous weblog and social media accounts, Helene in Between. 

The Texas native finds wide-eyed awe and real delight within the sights of locales from Vietnam and the United Arab Emirates to her newly adopted house in Oxford, England. She’s gained followers—566,000 Instagram followers and counting—with reels about tradition shocks she’s skilled dwelling overseas, not as soon as, however twice. Her love for Christmas markets is contagious, with posts that includes steamy drinks and indulgent dishes oozing with cheese including to her platform’s attraction. 

Whereas different digital nomad social media accounts have an aspirational—and sometimes unattainable— really feel, Sula’s posts have a “you may sit with us” vibe. Now, she’s taking her viewers on one other journey together with her new ebook, Two O’Clock on a Tuesday at Trevi Fountain: A Seek for an Unconventional Life Overseas, through which she encourages readers to search out their very own path to a unprecedented life. 

Helene in Between enters the blogosphere

It began with a mountaineering accident. In 2011, Helene Sula was attending her new husband’s work occasion at a mountaineering fitness center when an unsecured belay shortly led to her hurtling off the wall and smashing her leg and ankle. A bout of pneumonia within the hospital added insult to literal harm and continued blackouts attributable to her sickness meant she couldn’t return to work. 

It appeared Sula might now not keep away from the inheritance from her household of writers. She launched a weblog. “I used to be so bored of watching Friday Night time Lights,” she recollects. “It was simply an outlet, a spot to attach and discuss my life. It in a short time turned an obsession.” 

At first, her posts targeted on her day by day life. She felt inspired by the connections she made with different folks on-line, initially over their shared damaged ankles. “I had this niggling feeling like, I ponder if I might do that full time,” she remembers. In 2012, there have been few examples of full-time bloggers, and the trail to income felt extra like trades with different bloggers than revenue. 

The trail turned clearer when an entry on Belgium’s “Tomorrowland” digital dance music competition went viral, and he or she noticed she might pivot her love of journey into the weblog. She additionally poured her experience working a day job in company social media into the fervour undertaking. 

Steadily, she landed sponsorships and created merchandise to promote, similar to an Instagram content material system. “It didn’t really feel like I used to be promoting folks one thing. It was a means to assist different folks develop,” she says. She wasn’t keen to give up her day job till she was making extra on the weblog than at her job. Nonetheless, destiny intervened: She was fired the day she launched her first on-line course. 

Shifting ahead

Sula’s been a full-time content material creator, influencer and journey entrepreneur since 2015. Her content material platform was so profitable that her husband Michael was capable of be a part of her enterprise a 12 months later. Though she says their enterprise partnership hasn’t been with out its frustrations and occasional stumbles, they’ve discovered a 50/50 partnership with Helene specializing in branding, advertising and social media, and Michael engaged on ever-important journey logistics and the enterprise facet.

The weblog’s freedom allowed the couple to embrace a digital nomad life, which has included relocating from Helene’s native Dallas to Heidelberg, Germany in 2016. (HGTV’s Home Hunters Worldwide chronicled their house search.) The duo moved again to the U.S. in 2019 to journey the nation in an RV. They made the worldwide leap once more in 2023 after they relocated to Oxford, England—all with their two canine in tow.

Helene Sula expands into entrepreneurship

Though she says a robust social media presence requires no small measure of tolerating criticism each legitimate and petty, Sula believes the connections she’s made with individuals are rewarding. That’s what led her and Michael to steer journeys themselves. For a few years, this was with journey information corporations that entice well-known journey hosts, like TrovaTrip and Avalon Waterways River Cruises.

A want to curate their friends’ experiences pushed the Sulas to constitution two group river cruises, creating itineraries and actions that attraction to a number of generations, together with youthful vacationers. “It’s such an effective way to get from A to B with a big group of individuals, and to get them to those completely different locations and seeing as a lot as they’ll. It additionally has the good thing about unpacking only one time,” she says. 

Sula says whereas she acknowledged the monetary dangers, she felt the demand was there. “We’ve been going to those locations for years. We’re well-known for it with our viewers,” she says. The preliminary reserving bought out in 10 minutes, main them so as to add a second. Michael deliberate each cease and each exercise within the itinerary, which allowed the Sulas to take friends to extra of their favourite locations.

Turning the weblog right into a ebook 

Sula’s want to attach with extra folks led to her aforementioned ebook, Two O’Clock on a Tuesday at Trevi Fountain, accessible April 9, 2024. In contrast to the Helene in Between weblog, which frequently delivers journey information content material targeted on logistics, the memoir delves into Sula’s private story. She believes it provides classes which might be related even when folks don’t need to comply with in her worldwide footsteps. 

“The message that I need to get throughout is you is usually a regular, odd individual and reside a unprecedented unconventional life,” she says. “You possibly can go on your goals and keep grounded. You possibly can transfer overseas along with your two canine and have a mortgage and a wedding and nonetheless reside a unprecedented life.” 

Sula knew in the event that they had been to maneuver overseas and journey extra, they wanted to take action in a calculated method. The duo spent a 12 months researching, planning and prioritizing. They crafted lists of issues they wanted of their lives to really feel grounded. For instance, she knew she wanted a house base. In addition they set a restrict on the size of journeys they might take. Lastly, they knew they needed to keep up connections to household and mates, so that they inspired them to go to usually—steadily assembly guests in a locale aside from their house base overseas. 

The ebook’s title is drawn from a second when Sula acknowledged she had met her goals. That point, day and place was, “one of many first occasions I noticed that I used to be dwelling my dream and I didn’t even understand it. It took that second for me to go searching and understand that you realize, I’ve not needed to change all the pieces about myself and throw away all the pieces I knew, [but] I can do the issues that I need to do,” she says. 

She hopes the teachings are relevant to anybody, whether or not they’re hoping to begin a enterprise, launch a brand new profession or journey the globe as she does. 

Photograph by Michael Sula.