Nischa Shah, once a high-flying investment banker in London, made a risky career shift over a year ago. After a decade in the corporate world, Ms Shah traded her six-figure salary for the camera, becoming a full-time YouTube content creator. Her gamble paid off, leading to 4x the success and a newfound sense of fulfilment.
Here's how she made it happen.
From Banker to YouTuber
In 2022, Nischa Shah worked as an investment banker, serving as the associate director at Credit Agricole in London, earning over $256,000 (about Rs 2 crore) annually. Despite this lucrative role, Ms Shah felt unfulfilled and sought a more meaningful career.
Around her ninth year in banking, Ms Shah realised her job was neither "challenging" nor "intellectually stimulating". "I wanted to find a way to help other people whilst getting paid for it and what I was doing in banking was helping corporations, sovereign governments," she told CNBC.
In January 2023, Ms Shah left her high-paying job to become a full-time content creator on YouTube, focusing on personal finance. Her gamble paid off, and between May 2023 and May 2024, Ms Shah made over Rs 8 crore through YouTube monetisation, selling courses and products, doing corporate talks and partnering with brands.
"I'm making a lot more than I was in banking," she said. "As a result of not chasing money anymore and just chasing what I'm good at, my passion, and what I really enjoy, it's managed to surpass everything that I had before."
When Nischa Shah started her YouTube channel, she built an emergency fund to support herself for at least nine months after quitting her job. Having this fund gave her the confidence to take the leap and pursue her passion full-time.
Ms Shah acknowledged that waiting until she made a lot of money from YouTube would have taken longer to make the jump. Instead, she went all-in, using her emergency fund as a safety net. She saw it as a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity" to "take my life in my own hands and just go for it," she said.
Ms Shah's success on YouTube was not instantaneous. It took 11 months to reach 1,000 subscribers, but a turning point came in September 2022 when a video about her life as an investment banker went viral, quickly gaining her 50,000 subscribers and earning her over Rs 3 lakhs.
Nischa Shah's videos cover a wide range of topics, from "Money Habits Keeping You Poor" and "How to Invest Your First $1000" to "7 Passive Income Ideas". Her videos receive anywhere between 1,00,000 to 9 million views and she has become a trusted figure in the personal finance space.
