Beau Miles

Beau Miles is a popular adventurer and YouTuber.

He has more than 500 thousand subscribers on his YouTube channel by the name Beau Miles.

Beau is also an author, public speaker, runner, kayaker and was a filmmaker and a blogger.

Introduction-

Beau Lauchlan Miles was born on 21 December 1979 in West Gippsland, Australia.

His father, Gary Miles was a highway trucker and is an artist.

Gary was one of the finalists for the prestigious John Leslie Art Prize 2020 thanks to one his paintings titled ‘South Bound to Melbourne’.

Beau’s mother’s name is Maggie and step father’s name is Mos.

Beau has sisters, Azzadine, Alice and Jade.

Love for outdoors, golf & running-

His mother being an avid gardener inspired Beau towards the outdoors.

Also, his father was strict that he and his siblings spend time outdoors and he used to not allow them to stay indoors and this eventually led him to love the outdoors.

Beau grew up on a small farm and used to have tree houses.

At a young age, his mother introduced Beau to golf and bought him golf clubs.

His mother believed that golf is a safe sport and she didn’t allow him to play football as she feared that he might injure himself.

Even though Beau loved golf as a kid, he wasn’t a good player and used to spend most of the time searching for golf balls in the bushes.

At 14, he had a barney with his father and stepmother and at that time, he was chopping wood which wasn’t blowing up.

As Beau was very much into sports, he decided to go for a run to let off steam.

So, he ran just over a couple of kilometers to the end of the road and was fascinated by the sense of freedom and happiness that running provided.

And thanks to this, Beau fell in love with running and started running more and also got into the school level cross-country team.

After becoming a YouTuber, he published several videos of him running and some of them have accrued more than a million views namely, Running 43 km along a hidden railway line, Running 650km through the Australian Alps (in 13 days) and Running a marathon, one mile every hour.

Education & career-

After finishing high school, in 1999, Beau joined Monash University in Australia to study Bachelor of Education & Bachelor of Sport and Outdoor Recreation (Geography minor), Outdoor Adventure Education/Environmental Studies & Geography and he graduated in 2002.

In 2001, he did an exchange at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, Canada as a part of the third year of double degree of Monash University.

While in Canada, Beau fell in love with the outdoors of Canada and the United States and hitchhiked a lot in Canada and lived a decade in Vermont, United States.

From 2011 to 2017, he studied for a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Adventure Education from Monash University.

From September 2008 to December 2019, Beau worked as a Lecturer in Outdoor Education at Monash University.

From filmmaker to a YouTuber-

At 18, Beau wanted to become an actor but later, thanks to his love for outdoors, he started producing documentaries on outdoor, adventure and travel.

He was an avid book reader and loved reading adventure books and this also inspired him to produce adventure documentaries.

Producing documentaries was a side hobby for Beau and he used to produce around one film per year.

His plan with his films was to release them at film festivals and try to attract broadcasters and get his films broadcasted on television or release his films to boutique theatres.

At that time, Beau didn’t release his films on YouTube as he thought it as just another social media platform and assumed that people wouldn’t watch cinematic films on mobile phones.

Later, as YouTube started becoming popular, he decided to start his YouTube channel and publish his films followed by other new videos onto it.

Also, as Beau was using YouTube videos while working as a lecturer, he decided to contribute to YouTube by publishing his videos onto it.

So, he started his YouTube channel by the name Beau Miles on 18 May 2016 and started working on it.

His first viral video & becoming a full-time YouTuber-

Beau started publishing videos onto his YouTube channel from May 2016 and for many years, his videos didn’t perform well.

On 17 November 2019, he published a video titled ‘Running 43km along a hidden railway line’ and this was his first video to become viral.

This video got a hundred thousand videos in the first week itself and as of January 2023, it has accrued 2.4 million views.

This video is the winner of Gold – Best running film in Sheffield Adventure Film Festival and People Choice 2019 in Port Fairy Adventure Film Festival.

As Beau lost his job as a Lecturer in December 2019, he became a full-time YouTuber.

And in order to completely focus on his YouTube channel, he also stopped being a filmmaker.

Beau also took a few YouTube courses to up his YouTube game.

As of January 2023, Beau has 583K subscribers on his YouTube channel.

He has 64.3K followers on Instagram and he also has a website, Beau Miles, on which he used to blog.

Beau also has a podcast by the name Beauisms.

He earns from advertisements on his YouTube videos and he also accepts donations on Patreon.

Beau has a crew helping him out with his YouTube channel.

Mitch Drummond helps him as a Director of Photography and Editor.

His book-

In July 2018, Beau walked 90 kilometers to give a lecture about adventuring at the university.

This was the second time that he walked a long distance and the first time was in October 2014.

This time around, Beau was accompanied by a photographer, Rodney Decker, who took beautiful photographs of him walking along the highway to work.

On 20 August 2018, his photographs along with his story got published in The Age, a major newspaper in Australia and the article became viral and was the most read article nationally that day.

Thanks to this, a couple of publishers approached Beau to publish a book and he chose to publish his book with Brio Books.

It took him 18 months to write the book and his book titled ‘The Backyard Adventurer’ was published on 5 May 2021.

Personal life-

Beau is married to Helen.

And this couple has a couple of daughters, May and Charlie.

Beau loves fishing, travelling and kayaking (kayaking was the subject for his PhD thesis).

In his twenties and into his thirties, he travelled a lot.

Beau travelled to Canada, United States, Africa, etc.

He lives in Jindivick town in Victoria, Australia.

So, how are you inspired by the success story of Beau Miles?

Share with me in the comment section below.