If you have a job that you don't like, start a YouTube channel. If you want to replace and escape that nine to five, definitely start a YouTube channel. And if you wanna financially protect yourself from your job role being wiped out and replaced by AI where you're called in the old office to be made redundant,
well, you definitely want to start that channel today and get creating because it is incredibly
lucrative if you know what you're doing and the barrier to entry is so low.
All of you can do it, which is why I'm doing this video because I wanna inspire you and push every single one of you to get cracking.
Get a camera and start talking about things that you are passionate about, that you can add value to other people's lives, your experiences, everything that you've been through, learn how to storytell,
and create YouTube.
I'm talking from firsthand experience.
Four and a half, five years ago, I started this channel, and it's been one of the best things that I ever did. And I really want you to take information I'm gonna share with you, and we'll go through a load of slides in a minute to give you a bit more
deep dive information that you can actually take away and implement. But I've turned my YouTube into a 6 figure income
from being on the platform and offline what I'm able to do on the back end. And my personal brand as a whole collectively,
Aaron Knightley,
is multi 6 figures. I am no one special.
Believe me. I didn't have rich parents. I didn't go to college. I didn't go to university. I got one GCSE
in PE.
That was it. But, yes, I had the initiative to start. I'm confident. I backed myself, and I've got a lot of self belief. And I want all of you to have that because right now, in 2026,
there is no better time if you wanna get out of your job as the prime example, which ties within my content to replace your salary, which let's face it, an average salary in The UK or US or wherever you are in the world is between what? 1 and a half to 4,000
a month? YouTube will replace that. Just to let you know, my channel at the moment is between
about 3 to 4 and a half a month. It fluctuates depending on how many videos I produce, how many views it gets. But I don't rely on the ad revenue. I'm more bothered about building the businesses offline,
which I'll also tie into today's video and also something very exciting towards about three quarters of this video is the fact that you can now sell personal brands. And I'll give you the information on how you can actually do that because there is this one incredible case study which I saw on LinkedIn the other day. I did all my due diligence on it, and it's got me very excited about building my personal brand with the possibility of selling.
So if you wanna make a lump sum of money, as I spoke about in a previous video about knowing your number to give you just the most incredible financial comfort for you and your family, well, your personal brand could be sold. Think about that. Look. YouTube has a very bright future. So for anyone who is sitting with a little bit of self doubt of, well, Aaron, not everyone can be a YouTuber.
Look. It's in its infancy.
It is gonna be competing with Netflix,
Prime,
Disney. It is not going anywhere. It is the mothership. So as I said, if you are worried about your job or you don't like it, you can build YouTube immediately
for very low cost in terms of equipment. Yes. You'll need a camera, a ring light, you know, a couple of bits and bobs. Just don't go out for a few meals or don't spend money at the weekend and just save that and put it into some of your startup equipment because the money is so worth it. I love doing YouTube
and I did it well before the money. As I mentioned on one of my previous videos, I'd already spent about 6 and a half thousand pounds. I was only on about 800 subscribers,
and that was money that I'd saved from my job, by the way, for anyone wondering how I had 6 and a half thousand pounds. I saved that from my job because I'm a saver, and I just invested it into my YouTube. And I've made that tenfold.
And again, I remind you, if I can do it, if I can sit in front of a camera right now and talk to no one apart from a Sony z v e one, you can do it too. Believe me. Look. Let's start with an article on screen about the bright future that is YouTube. Okay. So YouTube is seen as the new TV. Right? It's the changing landscape from the traditional TV to the digital age that we're in. Right? The future is bright for YouTube and its creators. Right? The brands who are leveraging YouTube are the ones that are winning, and it's totally true. So look. Let's go through a few slides just to give you a bit more information.
Hopefully, a lot of hope, and it doesn't have to be over complicated.
This now we're actually in a day and age where new channels are earning a lot of money. They're monetizing very quick, much quicker than I did. My journey in YouTube was painful, and I'll tell you the reasons why and how you can avoid that. But YouTube can
replace your job. YouTube can buy your dream home. You know, some people may say, well, Aaron, the big YouTubers, they were lucky back then when YouTube was on the rise. And, yes, they were able to do this and that, and they made a lot of money. No. People in 2026
are being super successful earning tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of pounds and dollars on YouTube right this very moment as I'm talking to you, and they are buying dream homes. You can retire your partner from work, your husband, your wife. You can give your kids a great life, all from YouTube. It is a business. You can protect yourself from AI. Now to anyone saying, well, no. What about all the AI Aaron out there? No. YouTube is very good at nipping in the bud all the rubbish AI and all the faff. It's got a lot of checks now. It's got a lot of regulations and restrictions to make sure that all the AI crud, which we're all fed up of, isn't at the forefront. And if we actually look at the curvature of the economy, like society as a whole, we're very fed up of AI. So eventually,
community is really gonna be a big thing and face to face interaction and real human beings and being very real and authentic.
Like, I will muck up my words. You'll hear me slurp on my cup of tea or my cup of coffee.
You know, I might knock my mic. People want real people. You know, people buy from people and that human interaction,
whether it's face to face or on a long form YouTube video, that's what we want. We don't want AI. So you can protect yourself from AI, and you can protect yourself financially once you have monetized.
The benefit is you can scale businesses. Definitely scaling hold up through YouTube.
Exit nine, peak performance,
my consulting,
my educational business, my finance business, selling my products, my books,
my accelerators,
my programs,
all scalable
and with a little nudge and a little push from YouTube being a great lead generator. Remote working. This one is of the things I absolutely love to be honest with you is the fact that I can work wherever, and which is really nice because then you can work outside during the summer. I can work at the bottom of the garden. I could go to London. I could go to the park, a cafe, a restaurant, a bar. It doesn't really matter. I can work at home. I can work at night, early in the morning, at the gym. I do love the remote working,
and that is so much better than when I was in a job. I mean, I have to say that's probably one of my biggest perks is being able to work wherever. You know, sometimes I have to do a little bit on holiday, very, very rare. If I did need to reply to something or act on something that was urgent, I can do that. And then finally, being able to travel the world because, again, you have remote working, but more so when you start managing the money that you make and then you start investing that back into your YouTube and it start scaling, and then you start earning more than you're reinvesting,
and you can start taking start taking profits from YouTube, you can start traveling.
That is one of the benefits. Now stop worrying and start today. So I really wanna encourage you to
start immediately. I actually challenge anyone who's up for it, bit of accountability on your part. From this video, let me know in the comments if you are going to now go and start and create your first video. Or maybe you've already started, but I urge you to double down because one thing that I'll talk about is the monetizing timeline in just a second. I love that. And if you double down, you can increase that happening even faster. But look. Let's kick off. Any age.
You You don't have to be a certain age to start. It's a brilliant thing. There's no discrimination. However old you are, start. I love listening to YouTube channels. This is just me personally, of a slightly older generation because they offer a lot of wisdom. And I'm very big into learning from history, what to avoid, what not to do, listening to our elders, what they would have done. So I actually do lean into older channels where they're offering a lot of wisdom. I love the street interviews with older people where, you know, people go out and they ask what would they tell them their younger selves. And there's a lot of older people now who are in their forties and fifties who have given up careers, director roles, senior leader roles to start YouTube channels, and I love it. And you can do it too. Now the brilliant thing as I said at the beginning, you can build whilst in a job. So you can mitigate any financial risk and build your channel alongside your job in the mornings, in the evenings,
and at the weekends.
So there's no excuse not to. And if you find an excuse, it's because you know you could do it, but you'd rather lean on the excuse why not to create a YouTube channel. Now the monetizing timeline, this is a big one. I absolutely love this when I was chasing my monetization on YouTube. So this platform is a business. It really is.
This is just how you run a business. Analytics, a team, you manage profits, expenses, you do SWOT analysis,
so you really work on what's working, that you scale it, you build processes, autonomy, teams, all this kind of stuff. Right? It is a full blown business, but it is one of the only
businesses that has a timeline to tell you when you'll be successful before you start earning money. So I don't know if it's the same because I can't see it now, but when you chase monetization,
obviously, a thousand subscribers, 4,000 watch hours, you have two needle indicators to tell you when you've made it. So then you can literally just produce. You can just look at that and go, right. I just need to keep producing every day, week in high volume, and that needle is moving close to the monetization.
As soon as that box is ticked,
the world is your oyster. I absolutely love that. Authentic and imperfections.
Channels now that are earning a lot of money are just authentic,
uh, and being, uh, like I said, imperfections.
You know, you might see me at times knock my mic, I do this, or I, you know, look at my laptop with my notes or I might even just read because I've got a couple of notes here to make sure I don't forget them a couple of tips. Just being a human,
I I don't like scripts which I'll come on to in a minute. I I don't like people being fake. I don't like seeing people read on teleprompters.
I feel like that type of content is forced.
You know, we're not looking for that. People just want to connect and resonate with a real human being so they can take that information opposed to just getting everything off chat GPT. They wanna listen to someone who's been through it, take little golden nuggets, and then go and apply it to their life without all the fluff. So don't worry about being perfect because you just start. It's a little bit clunky, but that's okay. That's why I think my driving videos do so well and my country walk and talks. There's no script. There's very little preparation in terms of
what I'm gonna talk about because I just like to be off the cuff. You know, I just I like to talk about things that I'm very passionate about, which is why my country walks and my car videos are a little bit more punchy than these sit down videos because, you know, I can refer to notes and, uh, my slides that we're looking at now. The next one is collect data and nurture. What that means is the brilliant thing with YouTube is that you can ask people very subtly to go get your free guides,
a form, a downloadable, some form of a PDF, and in exchange for that, you can collect their data, name, email, number,
anything else that you've put within those survey forms. You then collect that, which actually adds to the value of your brand because you're understanding
slash viewer
slash customer behaviors and, you know, kind of patterns. But then you can nurture that off the platform, which is called controlled marketing. When you produce a video and you don't collect data, you have no idea who's watched you apart from the analytics of, you know, demographics, geographics on the YouTube studio, but you don't actually know who they are and why they watched. You didn't know their problem. You didn't know if you could help them, and you then can't speak with them off the platform. It's really important to collect data because that's where you can scale businesses and make big, big money. Not look. YouTube, you can make a hell of a lot of money on the platform, but the real big money is when you start selling a service or a product. You've actually built a full blown legitimate business. And that's what I would encourage all of you to do because then you're just future proofing yourself, especially financially, and just making that really watertight in a very volatile world. And that's kind of what I keep coming back to with all of you is financial
independency
and security and sustainability
is so important. Uh, one of the benefits, the next one is super lean and scalable.
Very low cost. Yes. You gotta get a camera. Yes. You gotta get audio. Maybe you have a Mac laptop or whatever it might be. But it's super scalable, super lean. And it falls into p and e, profit and expense, not profit and loss. Next one is listen, engage, build, and sell. Listen is read the comments, digest what people are saying, take it on board, engage with them, and then build off of that, and then sell. Prime example, two and a half years ago, that's more so from my short form content on TikTok and Instagram. I was talking a lot about how I got out the nine to five. I was the last one in, the first one out, and I had a lot of people off those videos blowing up, uh, say, Aaron, how do I get out my nine to five? And I sat back and I thought, well, I got out my nine to five in a very realistic,
methodical,
proactive way, which was step by step. And I basically reversed engineer everything that I did, put it into now what is one of the most highly successful breakout programs, and then I sold it. And it did incredibly well within the educational side of side of my businesses. So I listened, I engaged,
I built, and then I sold. And that business in particular also went above 6 figures pretty within the first year actually. Low cost media team. I have an entire team now within my YouTube which is very small knit, know, it's very very lean in terms of the team that I actually use, but it's super streamlined to make sure that production is super high. As you might know, if you're subscribed, I constantly produce videos whether that be long form,
uh, or short form every week, every day. Now finally, this is the exciting part, the ability to sell and exit. Now I was on LinkedIn not too long ago, and this company called TBPN,
which essentially is a media outlet, a media agency built from YouTube, two founders from California,
they were bought
and acquired by OpenAI,
the software company. Now the reason this is exciting, and I suggest you go do your own homework due diligence, just ask chat GPT to give you all the information all the information on how they were founded and then sold. In a nutshell, if you build a personal brand that has enough influence,
has enough attention,
you have enough unique pieces of data, you could sell to private equity or a software company.
This gets me excited because
as I spoke about in my previous video, the walk and talk, if you know your number, which will set you and your family free for life until you leave this earth, you now have the ability to get that lump sum by selling
to either private equity of some sort or a software company, which will take all of that leverage, all of that influence, all of that unique data that you've been collecting within some form of a CRM system, and they'll buy it. So that TBPN
was one of the first kind one of the first of its kind, sorry, to sell
essentially a brand to a software company, OpenAI. You know, it's mind boggling and in fact, it's very exciting. Now when starting a YouTube channel, these are some of my top tips to get you going whilst you're working the job, bring yourself to the point of monetization,
scale it, build up your ad revenue, replace your salary. Do all of this. Take it all away and go and do it. Now let's start with content. One mistake that I made in the beginning, I didn't really learn this
until about three and a half years in. I didn't pick one niche. I was too broad. So if you're starting today, figure out what you actually wanna talk about clarity.
Pick one niche and just hyper niche into it. Beat the same drum. Become an expert in that one topic. I was too broad. I was talking about finance, health, fitness. Yeah. I was doing vlogs. I was doing a bit of gym. Yeah. All this kind of stuff. I wasn't teaching the algorithm where to send my content, so I never was actually sent anywhere. One of the other biggest mistakes actually that I made which I have as a note down here, I was also sending external links. Now I won't go into that too much. I'm just gonna suggest another video which I've created which will pop up the thumbnail here.
Go check that out. That will be at the end of this video. Go watch that. That is all the mistakes that I made on YouTube and then how I corrected them to start growing quick. Um, so go check out that video. And then another one I must mention to you around the whole niche. Jason and I spoke about this on the podcast,
uh, him and I done, which again podcast style, but it's an educational video. The thumbnail for this other video, which you should go check out, it's an hour long. It will also be at the end of this video. Do not start a podcast if you want to monetize and actually earn a living off your YouTube channel. There are many different reasons why. I'm not gonna go into into this video because I have to spend a good ten to fifteen minutes explaining that. It's better you just watch that long video. Starting a podcast is not gonna be the quickest way for you to make a lot of money through a YouTube channel. It's gonna be hefty in costs to you. You will grow incredibly slow,
and you're likely to give up because the big podcast have already taken the audience, and it's gonna be hard for you to compete. And, essentially, you're building other people, not your personal brand. So there's many different reasons why it's best to watch that video. Anyway, next one, do not script.
For me, I don't like videos, as I said, that feel fake,
that's forcing a message that isn't true to the individual telling it. I cannot stand it when I see people looking into the camera and I see their eyes going
like that. I just want to connect with a human that's out for a walk,
in the car, sitting at home,
wherever, just chilling, relaxing, and I know that they're telling a story that is true. I don't like fancy music in the background. Um, if anyone seen it, do you remember the video that I did at the bottom of my garden, I read out a poem, different style video? I do think about it, about having a, you know, a bit of soft music in the background that matched my tone, and then I thought,
no. I'm just gonna I'm just gonna say it. I'm just gonna say the poem, and I'm just gonna keep it authentic and real, and we'll see how it performs. I don't like
this kind of sentimental music trying to lure you in. I just don't. And I don't like scripts. Now the next one is avoid cheese.
I actually do avoid cheese the food. I'm not on about cheese the food, but as I've gotten older, I avoid dairy and,
what else? And
starchy carbs. But what do I mean by avoid cheese? Being cringe. I don't like cringey creators
who are just painful to watch. I don't mind mistakes, butts,
clunkiness.
I don't mind imperfections
because then I know I'm dealing with a human being that is just being raw and real. And that's what I like. That's who I like to learn from. I don't like, uh, finely edited videos. I don't like cuts every two seconds.
You know, you would have noticed from this video, there's very, minimal cuts,
minimal editing apart from the pop ups of what I'm reading, you know. And then finally, good audio. One of my best mics that I've got is this Rode
Pro Plus mic. It is. It's only about
£219
on Amazon, something like that now. Now growth,
volume and output. It's just like sales. If you've got a salesperson that makes a 100 calls a day, and you've a salesperson that only does five, who do you think is gonna earn more money? The salesperson that makes a 100 calls. It's very obvious. It's no secret. Volume and output. The more you do,
something will pop. Uh, and it is true. You know, it really is true. You only need one video. And by the way, if you just create however many videos a week, a month, but but one or two of them do 50 to a 100,000 views, those two videos will probably earn more than your salary.
So, you know, you might not have every video perform
amazingly,
but one or two videos that you do produce out of that month is likely to earn more than your salary. I mean, it's amazing, and it's evergreen.
It's not like when you go into a job, you clock in, now you're being paid, but when you clock out, pay stops. With YouTube, you're you're paid. It's evergreen. It is passive. It is it is as close to passive income as can get. And actually, I'm just thinking of what someone has said to me in the past. Yeah. Well,
Aaron,
when you create YouTube, you've got to constantly keep up with it. Yes. It's a treadmill that never stops, but it's a treadmill you're in control of. You're you're in control of your pace. I think the argument to be had is when you're in a job, you're not in control of anything. Whereas when you produce on YouTube,
you're in control of everything.
So, yes, the treadmill never turns off, but one day we might walk, one day we might just lay on it and let it run us off, the other day we might sprint. But either way, we're in control. That's what I love about YouTube. You are solely reliant on yourself, and that is what I love about business and branding. I don't depend on anyone. You can go as fast or as slow as you want. Next one is deliver promises.
If your thumbnail and your description and your title says something, make sure you deliver on it because not only are people gonna get annoyed about it that you didn't deliver on it. Also YouTube is likely to
that's likely to go against you in YouTube's
what am I trying to say? In the way that YouTube will look at it is that they don't like it if you're trying to deceive for clickbait. That's what I'm trying to say is that make sure if you're saying something, because there will be algorithm checks to make sure the thumbnail matches the description, the title, the hashtags, and then actually what you're saying, is it aligned, and even down to, the timeline stamps. And then finally,
engage and engage.
As many of you all know, and I'm very, grateful for people who show up in the comments, I really am, I reply to everyone.
I can't get around to everyone immediately
on a video launch, but I am making my way through all the comments. And that was one thing that was really important to me. One, I can always learn what you want from me. Two, I can make adjustments.
And three, I can understand patterns and and what you need, and then could I build something from that. The next one is revenue.
Well, ad revenue can be great.
You can literally earn as much as you want because it's all based on your results. You know, the revenue is based on the results, on your output, the quality of your video, the engagement, all these kind of things, again, you're in control of. Brand deals.
Now I've made well over a £100,000 in brand deals and that's working with all types of companies. I don't work with brands on my YouTube though. I refuse to have I've been offered.
Do you know this is the first time I've ever said this. I have been offered tens of thousands of pounds
per company,
so it would well have accumulated over another 100,000.
So essentially what I'm saying, I have turned over a £100,000
down to promote
companies on my YouTube channel because I don't want to do an integrated video. I'm not saying that I won't ever do that, but I'm saying for the foreseeable and what I have denied so far is adverts to go on my YouTube channel, sponsored ads, not the ads that YouTube puts in, but actual companies that have reached out to me. Big companies that you would all know have offered me a lot of money, but I have refused it. But if I was to accept it, it'd make a hell of a lot of money. Paid communities, that's a great way to make money. And then scalable businesses. We're scaling Holder. We're scaling Exit nine. Scaling Peak Performance. I'm scaling my education and consulting business. So that, you know, in terms of the ways that you can make money
and again replace an average salary, it's endless.
The future is bright for YouTube, and I want all of you just to go get that camera
and just start filming. Go out for a walk. Go go sit in a forest. Go sit in your car. Look at Sam Sullick.
My stomach by the way. I don't know if you can hear my stomach rumbling. I've been trying to make my stomach quiet. I need I need another meal. I'm I'm training hard at the gym at the moment and, uh, I'm on a lot of calories and I haven't eaten for a while, so I need another meal. So look, let me wrap up this video because I do need to go eat now. Start.
Create.
Add value.
Don't worry about what people might think. Here's the funny thing. There is that saying, everyone thinks it's cringe until it works, and then they wanna know how you did it. When you get to a stage where you've replaced your income and then you're able to leave, you'll have other coworkers say to you, oh, how did you do that? Is is there any chance you can help me out? They all want to know when it works. I can't tell you how many old coworkers of mine still watch all my content. And I just know that they're envious. Possibly the word is jealous actually, but I know a lot of people in my old job who still watch me and I know that they're thinking, I'm sure I'd have done that. I actually know one guy I told George, you know, I'll just say his name. George might even watch my videos, I'm not sure. But I said to George ages ago, he should have started a business and he should have started YouTube. And he kinda it was always just a nod. Yeah. Maybe one day, you know, maybe. And I think, you know, especially because he actually looks at my Instagram stories. I think there's a little bit of George. Because George had potential.
He had potential. He's one of the guys that I referred to in one of my previous videos where I said there were a couple that were untapped potential, but they didn't have the the fire, the the ignition to get going. Whereas I had the ignition, I needed it to happen. So look, I hope within this video, I have encouraged you to start a YouTube video because I I start YouTube videos, start a YouTube channel because I truly mean it. If I can do it, you can too. And as you've seen
by this video, this hasn't been perfect.
I've mucked up. I've got my words wrong at times because, again, I don't script. I'm just saying things, you know, off the top of my head that wanna share, and we've gone through some notes. But it wasn't it was far from perfect.
But I have got the message across to you. That was the main thing. So if you did like this video, do let me know in the comments. I would love to hear from you, and especially if you are gonna take away some information and go and act upon it. That's really the the trick to all of this is, it'd be a real shame if you got to the end of this video and you still did nothing. Remember, motivation is great and all, but it's like a pre workout. You take a pre workout, you get a spike, you wanna train, but then it dies off very quickly. Be inspired,
but then take massive action.
That's where, like,
you know,
the real gold is is actually doing the work that needs to be done, and it it quite literally just needs you to plan out what you're gonna talk about, pick a niche that you'll quite happily,
uh, dive into for the foreseeable future because you're very passionate about it, and just go and teach people about that. And that's it. And then honestly, two, three years down the line, your whole life could look totally different. I mean, that's that's literally the case for me. I mean, the things that we get up to and what we're able to do now, you'd have said you'd have told me this four or five years ago. I probably would have doubted it ever so slightly,
but it's crazy. So yeah. And the time is now. So until next time, my good people. I hope you did enjoy it, and I will see you on the next one. Peace out.