Nischa Shah

Nischa Shah is an accountant, money expert, and a popular YouTuber.

She has 939K subscribers on her YouTube channel, ‘Nischa’.

She is a former investment banker.

Introduction-

Nischa Shah was born in 1994 into a joint family in the United Kingdom.

Her mother was born in an Indian village and grew up there.

Nischa’s father was born in Uganda.

Her parents, who are first generation immigrants, moved to the UK in the early 1980s and started from scratch.

Her father is an entrepreneur, and her mother is an employee.

Nischa has two sisters.

A financial & business geek-

Nischa has been a financial geek from a young age.

Growing up, she was very close to her father and their dinner conversations mainly revolved around business, finance, money, entrepreneurship and she developed an interest in these things.

Thanks to these conversations, she later developed a flair for finance and entrepreneurship.

While growing up, Nischa’s father used to look after her and her sister, as her mother used to leave for work.

Nischa spent most of her early years in the back of her father’s transit van, accompanying him to his business meetings and observing him and other people doing business.

She was the studious and nerdy one in her family, even though the atmosphere around her was mainly of business rather than education.

Later, when Nischa secured a banking job, she thought that she would do it just for a couple of years and then quit her job to start her own business.

Education-

She did her schooling from The Latymer School, London, England.

Here, Nischa did A-Levels in Maths, Economics, and Media and scored 9A*-As in GCSEs.

Even though at the time, she did film and photography, for A-Levels in Media, as a hobby, little did she know that she would later become a YouTuber.

Later, Nischa joined University of Nottingham, Nottingham, England and studied a 3-year undergraduate degree in Finance, Accounting and Management.

She is a ICAEW Qualified Chartered Accountant.

Career-

Nischa did modelling while at school and first year of university; later, she quit it as she shifted her focus towards finance, business, and entrepreneurship.

During her second year of university, she applied for a number of summer internships, mostly for middle office functions that can sponsor the ACA qualification and got sponsored to complete the accountancy qualification.

Nischa got an offer from Deutsche Bank; she made it to the client magazine by talking about how to empower and inspire millennials and thanks to this, she got a full-time offer at the bank and moved to the front office.

She worked as an Associate in structure trade & export finance in Deutsche Bank, from August 2013 to January 2018.

Then, Nischa joined Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation in April 2018 and worked as Vice President – Capital Markets in London.

Then, she quit her job to focus on her YouTube channel and other businesses.

YouTube-

Nischa has a habit of journaling and at the end of every year, she self-audits herself and writes down what she would accomplish in the following year.

In 2021, one of the questions that she asked herself in her Law of Attraction Planner was “what would I want to experience in life if time and money weren’t an issue?” among many answers was doing something that she enjoys whilst impacting and motivating others using her core strengths.

Later, Nischa read ‘The Almanack Of Naval Ravikant’ book and learnt that starting a podcast or YouTube channel has many benefits.

Also, at the time, even though she was doing fine at her day job, she wasn’t enjoying it, felt her job to be unfulfilling and felt mentally and physically drained to work at her job; she felt all-time low.

So, Nischa wanted to try something completely different and so, started her YouTube channel, ‘Nischa’ on 4 December 2021.

As she has been doing finance for many years, has knowledge of business and has been learning many things, she decided to document her learning publicly through her channel and at the same time, inspire and impact people.

Nischa noticed a lack of financial videos devoid of jargon and simplicity; so, she decided to teach finance in simpler terms and at the same time, earn from her YouTube channel.

She used to do property investing on the side and earn through rental property; a lot of her friends were curious to learn about it; so, her first ever video is on property investing, it was published on 14 December 2021.

Nischa’s YouTube channel became an escape from her day job.

Quitting her job for entrepreneurship; succeeding-

One of her close colleagues in her team, who worked in the job for nearly two decades, was let go.

This disheartened Nischa and she realised that the company doesn’t owe one anything but a paycheck.

At the time, even though she got promoted, she couldn’t celebrate it; she felt that this time, she could have gotten lucky to be promoted but she couldn’t always be lucky and might not always hold down her job.

Nischa also realised that she is only as good as the hours she can dedicate while working for someone else and her earnings are directly linked to her time; she wanted to be financially free and have more control over her financial life.

She felt only the first few years of working in the corporate career to be fulfilling and intellectually stimulating; eventually, she started losing interest in her job and started feeling unfulfilled; this started taking a toll on her mental health.

So, Nischa signed up for therapy sessions and in her second session, her therapist suggested she see a life coach.

But she went home and spent a few days in solitude introspecting herself and tried to understand the reasons for her dissatisfaction and realised that she had no interest in her job and was doing it only for paycheck and social status.

Nischa came to a conclusion that her passion lay in inspiring people by teaching them finances; so, she decided to continue working on her YouTube channel, courses and workshops, teaching people finances.

It was clear to her that she couldn’t continue with her day job, but she didn’t immediately quit her job as she was using the salary to build up an emergency fund; to pay for all her investments of stocks, properties, index funds and gold; to pay for other side hustles.

Finally, when Nischa’s income from side hustles matched her fixed costs and she was earning an additional £300, she decided to quit her job to focus full time on entrepreneurship.

So, in 2023, after working nine years in investment banking, she quit her job; being childfree, and having an emergency fund which could last her 9 months in case something doesn’t work out, gave her confidence to quit her day job.

At the time of her resignation, Nischa took an 84% pay cut from her $300,000 banking job and also let go of a 6-figure bonus, the largest bonus of her career, as she feared that she would delay quitting her job and following her passion by few years if she accepts the bonus.

In 2023, she started earning a six-figure income from her businesses.

Everything worked out for Nischa, as she made more in a year as a full-time entrepreneur than at the end of her nine-year banking career; she continues to earn astronomically higher compared to what she used to earn in banking.

A successful YouTuber-

Her video, ‘A Day In My Life As An Investment Banker,’ published on 3 September 2022, blew up and helped her gain many subscribers on her YouTube channel.

Thanks to the success of this video, Nischa decided to continue working long-term on her channel.

As of February 2024, she has 939K subscribers on her channel, and 150K followers on Instagram.

Nischa earns from a variety of sources from YouTube like advertisements, affiliate marketing, and sponsorships.

She has a team helping her with her channel.

Nischa has a website.

Book recommendations-

She is an avid reader, and the following are some of her book recommendations-

• I Will Teach You to Be Rich
• The 4-Hour Workweek (this book helped her to balance her side hustles whilst working at her full-time job)
• Rich Dad Poor Dad
• Think and Grow Rich
• Lean In

Personal life-

Nischa hasn’t revealed much of her personal life except that she is in a relationship.

She is an introvert and journals a lot.

Nischa lives in London.

So, how are you inspired by the success story of Nischa Shah?

Share with me in the comment section below.