Transcription
How is it going, boys and girls? Welcome back to Key West Waterman. My name is Aaron Young. Um, if this is your first time watching, this isn't really my typical video. This has been a video that's been highly requested, probably the most popular requested video I've ever had. Um, so I wanted to get to it. But just in case this is your first time watching, I wanted to introduce myself real quick and my family, kind of let you know a little bit of a quick backstory before I dive into the nitty-gritty.
My name is Aaron Young. I'm a YouTuber, obviously, and also I'm a charter captain and a commercial fisherman and diver down in a place called Key West, Florida. If you don't know where that is, type it in, it'll pop up. Southernmost point of the continental U.S. Um, this is my lovely fiance, Madeline, who is the owner and operator of Paddle and Madeline Paddle Board Tours down here in Key West. She also sells or does real estate, she's a realtor down here. So if you're by chance looking to chase the dream and move to paradise, she is your gal. I will put her link, um, in the description. We have two cats. This is Tuna, very vocal, and who's a fart face. And this is Pearl, who's nice and quiet and minds her own business. She doesn't make as many guest appearances. And this is, what would you call her? The, uh, this is my more excited half. She's the rage to my calmness. Um, we are actually polar opposites. This is Tipsy. I've had her for 12 years. Tuna and Pearl, or maybe two this year? Two? Yeah, yeah, in a couple months. A couple months, they'll be two. But anyways, wanted to, like I said, just introduce myself. Uh, this video, the reason for it is to kind of tell you the backstory of Key West Waterman, how it is I got from where I started to living in paradise today. Um, it looks like all fun and games, and it is most of the time, but we do work hard for what we have, and kind of wanted to get down to that and tell you guys the whole story. So let's dive in.
Righty. So if you're looking for five quick tips to become rich and live in paradise, uh, this probably isn't the video for you. This is gonna be a long-winded explanation of how I accidentally, um, became one of the happiest people on the planet. But before I dive into it, I want to say two things. And I'm going to answer one of them's going to be an answer to a question. Before I moved here, my thought was, um, how do people live in these these crazy destinations? How can they afford that? Um, and it was always just, you know, it was just a question that drove me crazy, and I never really understood it. Um, but just to give you, um, a question that's probably on some of your minds, because it was on mine before I moved here, it can be done alone. You can financially do this on your own. I don't come from money. Not that my parents were poor or rich or bad or good, I had an amazing childhood, but I don't come from money myself. Started this, and when I met Madeline, we obviously joined forces financially. I got here by myself. I live in a house on the water in paradise. I literally could not be happier, and I did it on my own financially. And I just want you to know that it is possible, no matter where you come from, you can do that.
And number two, I want to address social media. YouTube, it's all highlight reels. I know I repeat this. If you've watched the channel before, you know I'm really big on, uh, selling, not selling, preaching reality. A lot of stuff goes on when this camera turns off. As a charter captain, most of my full days are 14 to 16 hour days. Um, I, I'll randomly get comments, "Oh, it must be nice to be rich." I promise you, I am far from rich. I work really hard for what I have. Not that others don't, I work really hard for what I have. So when that camera turns off, I know it looks like we're just kind of out goofing off, having fun, but when the cameras aren't rolling, we are working our butts off to to live this life, to be where we are. Um, there are mornings that I'm up at 4:30 in the morning editing for two hours because I'm late on a video before my eight-hour charter and two hours of cleaning the boat before and after and prepping and all that stuff. So, um, just keep that in mind. Um, yeah, just keep that in mind. Uh, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, all that stuff's not reality. People only want you to see what they want you to see. They want you to see the highlights and make it seem like it's something that it's not. Just know that there's a lot of people out there that work really hard, and you may see them living this life, but a lot of them have put a lot of hard work into it. So enough preaching, let's get to the story.
All righty. So Key West Waterman roots. So I won't start at the very beginning. Um, and I'll try not to be long-winded, as one of my specialties is repeating myself and I get a little off on tangent sometimes, but I'll pretty much start where I'll say the turning point in my life was, which was 2012 or 13. At the time, I was living in a place called Titusville, Florida. My dates will be a little off. I was living in a place called Titusville, Florida. I was extremely happy. I had a great job. Had the job I thought I would have forever. I worked for a place called Florida Power and Light. Um, I was fishing and diving off of my 16-foot Gheenoe. I had a three-bedroom house. Um, I had a dog, and pretty much everything you could ever want. I had a good paying job, got to do what I wanted to do on my days off and my time off. Um, and life was great. And I want to say it was January. Dates are irrelevant. Um, I was laid off from Florida Power and Light. I had been there for five years at the time, and at the time, I thought it was essentially the worst thing that could ever happen to me. I was just obviously, um, my world had just turned upside down. I thought I was going to be there forever. I thought, you know, this was it. I'm going to work at a great company and do my time and retire. So I was laid off. They gave me a severance package. I took that severance. I believe it was eight or nine thousand dollars. I put it in a savings account. I didn't know when I would need it. A couple months went by, and I was hired back on at that company as a contractor. Now, because I was a contractor, my pay went way down. Wasn't really doing the job that I had done before. Um, I didn't like it at the time. And not that money measures the value of a person's success or happiness, but it is required to live and pay bills, unfortunately. At the time, I was making as a contractor, $400, I believe it was, $83 or $87 a week. So I was not making a lot of money. I was barely squeaking by, and it really, really just, it kind of messed me up mentally. I went from having everything I ever wanted to not knowing what was going to happen because just squeaking by to pay my bills. Um, and something just changed in me, and I said, "This is not it. This is not the way my life is supposed to be. How can I change it?"
And as when I was younger, we visited the Keys a lot with my dad and family, and we did a lot of trips in the summertime. We did lobster trips and whatnot, and I was always drawn to the Keys. I've always loved the water. I've been in the water my entire life. My dad was kind of the one that really introduced me to the ocean, and I guess you could say created my love for it. So that was always in the back of my head. And after all this happened, I, you know, I just didn't really know what to do. So I said, "Okay, how can I get to the Keys?" Um, and I'll kind of take a step back. And when you visit places, you see the locals living there, and from time to time, you forget that people have to live there. People can afford to live there. When you go to paradise, you go, "How do I live here?" Well, people do it. They, they work, they pay their bills. There's a lot of different means to make that happen, but it is possible. So growing up, I always thought, you know, it's just this fantasy land. How do people ever afford to live in the Keys? There's no way to do it. Well, when my world got turned upside down, I said, "Okay, well, other people are doing it. How can I figure out how to do it?" So I went to Facebook, which at the time was kind of this new booming thing, and I wrote a status and I said, and I think this is verbatim, "Someone talk me out of selling everything I own and moving to the Keys." Um, and long story short, a guy I met in college for about five minutes, maybe, uh, back then when you met people, he immediately friend requested each other on Facebook. His name was Aaron Kuttner, and he immediately, it was maybe 10 minutes, and responded, "I have a room for rent in Key West. Call me," or something along those lines. So I called him right then. He said it was a Thursday, I believe. He said, "We'll come down this weekend, check it out." Um, so I drove down to Key West on Friday, spent the weekend there, got back on Monday. I just, obviously, I knew what the Keys was about, and just saw the room. He told me how much it was. I just, you know, in my head, I'll figure it out. So I drove back on Monday, put in my one week's notice, which was kind of a jerk move. Normally do two weeks, but I was just too excited, I couldn't wait. Put in my one week's notice, sold everything I owned, and I drove down to the Keys by myself with my dog, my little 16-foot Gheenoe, and whatever else I had that I couldn't sell. I believe it was my brother Sean that helped me move.
So I get down here, I've got my severance, I'm feeling, kind of, we'll call it paradise. You know, you kind of get sucked into what we call the Keys disease. So I took, I said, "This is, this is what I told myself. I said, I'm gonna take three months off. I'm gonna enjoy it." Um, then I'll get to work. So I took three months off. Um, literally, I fish and dove probably every single day. Um, I filled my freezer with fish, was eating lobster and fish daily. It was just, I was living the dream. It was everything I could ever wanted. So I did that for about three months. Uh, after the three months was up, um, time to get back to work. That's one of the hardest things down here is getting out of that vacation mode and realizing you got to go to work. You do have to pay bills, unfortunately. So I got a job. I believe it was with a snorkel boat. I can't remember what the company was called. I was doing snorkel tours. So I did that for a while, realized I hated it. Too many people, way too many tourists. Uh, it was just kind of a way to get by. Next step, Aaron Kuttner, the guy who rented me the room, got me a job at a place called Signs Unlimited. So I was installing signs and cutting stickers and doing all kinds of stuff. That job got me by for a while. And during all this, I'm fishing and diving. I started, I had an Instagram, but I started posting regularly on Instagram and really kind of creating a name for the name was always Dibs on Bottom, but just creating a name as a spear fisherman in the Keys. I was shooting fish on the little teeny tiny Gheenoe when the weather was good enough, or even if it wasn't good enough, I'd get beat. I'd get, uh, beat myself up on the boat because it was too rough. That boat couldn't really handle much, but I was just spearfishing constantly, constantly spearfishing, and posting all that stuff, and the followers started to grow. And that is kind of the beginning of when the social media presence started to be born.
And there was a few guys that I met when I first got down here. I'm kind of stepping all around because there was a lot going on. A few guys I met that actually taught me a whole lot. Zachary Freeman was probably the front runner in that. He spent a lot of time with me, taught me a lot of stuff for, quite honestly, I had no benefit of his own. He taught me probably more than anyone I knew down here. Chris Mendola was another guy. He's a very, both of which are successful charter captains. And another, Robert Ruiz. I spent a lot of time with diving. Rob is still one of the, if not the biggest name down here for spearfishing. So those were probably the three guys, and there's plenty others. I can't, I honestly don't have time to name everyone, but those are the guys I spent the most time with, and I learned a lot from them. So all this is going on while I'm getting new jobs. I'm kind of fishing and diving by after work on my days off whenever I could. And I got a job at AT&T. Because I was realizing these little side jobs and stuff really wouldn't pay the bills. My background was kind of telco and utility. Got a job with AT&T, and I was actually there, I think, for three years. About halfway through my time at AT&T, the social media was starting to grow. I actually started a YouTube way back when, and I posted a couple videos. I didn't know you could make money on it. They just kind of sat, and I never did anything with them. But the big thing was Instagram, and the more I dove, the more I fished, um, the more people started contacting me about charters. And at the time, and I'd never actually told anyone this, I never had any intention of being a charter captain when I first moved down here. I just know that I wanted to live in the Keys. I wanted to fish and dive for for as much as I could, not necessarily for a living. I just wanted to have that access to the water. I wanted to eat fresh fish, and I wanted to eat fresh lobster. That's just, that's the life that I wanted. I had no intention of being a charter captain. So all these messages started pouring in. At first, it was slowly, and they started pouring in, "Do you do charters?" Answers, "No." "Well, I'll pay you cash. Can you take me out?" Uh, so I just kind of started a fire, not a fire, just made the wheels start turning in my head. And at the time, I was with AT&T. This was probably around 2015, which was actually the year I met Madeline, who is now my fiance. But the wheels started turning, and I decided, and people started kind of putting it in my ear, "Hey, why don't you start running charters?" And I thought, "You know what? I'm gonna do it just so I can pay for the hobby because I can't afford to fish and dive every day. I cannot afford this gas." Um, so I decided to start Dibs on Bottom Adventures. Um, a little reluctantly. I was kind of nervous about it. I really didn't know what to expect. I have zero business background. I wish I could say I had this grand scheme of what was going to happen and how things were going to unfold and this huge plan, but quite honestly, this entire chapter of my life has kind of happened on accident. And I think it's partially because I actually believe what I do. I believe in what I do, and I'm actually passionate about it. So started the business, and obviously things started out really slow. You're starting from the ground up. I didn't spend any money in advertising. I didn't spend any money in paying commissions that the hotels charged quite a bit in commission, and I would pick up charters here and there on my day off. And obviously, over time, it got more and more and more. So for about a year, I worked five days a week, some days six days a week with AT&T. On my day off, I'd run a charter. And I want to say it was 2017. I quit AT&T full-time, where I quit the full-time job at AT&T and went charters full-time. It was probably the scariest thing I've ever done because now I had a big boat. I bought a 30-foot Contender. Um, I had all this gear, all the stuff I had to pay for, boat slip, insurances, and it was, it was really hard for probably two years. One or two trips a week, doing everything I could. I'd take a big sign and I'd drive in front of Mallory Square and walk down to Wall Street and hand out business cards. Um, it really, really took me a long time. And I know sometimes social media and whatnot, you just see someone where they're at, and you don't realize what it took actually to get there. And it was, I'm not gonna lie, it was tough. It took me a while, and it was very stressful, but it was worth every second of it.
Around that time, um, business started to pick up. Late 2018, again, my dates are probably all over the place. Me, I was living in a place, my whole time here until then, 2013 to about 2018, I was living with Aaron Kuttner and some roommates. And throughout the entire process, most people in the Keys either are born into it and they get a house, or they live in a shack behind their parents' house, or you have some job that pays you over $100,000 a year, or you have roommates. Um, the majority of the people down here had roommates, and I had roommates for pretty much the entire time. I still have a roommate. Um, so me and Madeline moved into a trailer in 2018. Finally got our own place. I had never, never been on my own here down in Key West. We had a roommate, Jordan Marsden, who's one of my childhood friends. Has, I've known him for 33 years. I'm 33 years old. I think we lived there for probably a year, a year and a half. Um, and things had started to get more serious, and we were looking into buying houses, and more so looking than actually being ready to buy a house. And, um, I'll tell you one thing that changed my mind or my life, and it was obviously Madeline and her ability to make a positive mindset kind of overturn anything, if that makes sense. And I'll give you an example, and I'm getting off on stories here, but, um, this literally changed my life, and it made me realize how I needed to look at things. A listing popped up for this house, and we did not have any money. I had combined, we had $4,000, maybe maybe saved up. She said, "I'm gonna go look at this house." I said, "Why? I said, you, that's just torture. Why would you go look at it? We can't afford it." She goes, "You never know. I'll just go look at it." So I was negative, she was positive. She said, "I'm gonna go look at it." I didn't come. She came and looked at it. She came home, she said, "It is our dream home. It's absolutely perfect. It's everything we'd ever want. It's on the water. It's on stilts. It's newer homes, hurricane rated and everything." Um, I said, "Wow, that's great. You know, unfortunately, we don't have any money. What do you want me to do?" She goes, "Well, I've been talking to the realtor. Maybe we can do rent to own." I said, "No one in Key West is going to do rent to own. These houses sell like hotcakes. That'll never happen." I was negative. She was positive. She said, "Well, I'm gonna talk to the realtor, see what they say." Realtor said, "It's a long shot, but we can give it a try. We'll, we'll approach the the homeowner." I said, "You're crazy. It's never going to happen." Homeowner says, "I'd consider it. What can you come up with?" Um, so we said, "Okay, well, we have no money. We have really no collateral. What can we come up with?" So in about a month, I sold a bunch of stuff I probably shouldn't have sold. Um, kind of moved some stuff around. We, I think we came up with $15,000 cash. We approached the homeowner and said, "We will give you $15,000 non-refundable, um, deposit if you will let us rent to own." And this was her idea, and the realtor's idea. I said, "They're never going to go for it. This guy's looking for cash. Never gonna, that's never gonna happen." Again, I was negative. She was positive. The guy went for it, signed a contract, rent to own. We spent a year here, allowed us to save up enough for the down payment. Um, and a positive mind literally bought our dream home. And that kind of, that moment kind of changed my life. Obviously, moving down here did, but that moment alone changed my life. And, um, a positive mind literally can pretty much accomplish anything. Obviously, there are exceptions to that, but, um, it really did. It really changed my life. So if there's a lesson in this video you take from that, have a positive mindset, and I promise you can get, you can get really far in life.
So to get back on track, um, between 2018, 2019, we moved into this house. A good friend of mine that had been down a few times, I met through a mutual friend named Darren, approached me and he said, "Dude, you have a pretty wild lifestyle. You need to start a YouTube channel." And I said, "I have a YouTube channel. Take a look at it." And he laughed. I had a couple videos on there. They had 10, 15,000 views, but they had, uh, monetized music in them. Couldn't be used, you couldn't make money. He goes, "No, you need to make videos about your lifestyle." Um, there's a lot of people doing this, and they're making a lot of money, which sounds like one of those schemes where, "Hey, we'll do it, and, you know, try and get rich." Turns out YouTube does not work that way. Um, my apologies, I actually had to cut the clip. I had some technical difficulties last night while editing, so I'm gonna have to redo this this evening. Um, anyways, so started the YouTube. Um, it took, it really took a while to get going. And just like anything in life that you want, whether you're starting a business, a YouTube, whatever, social media following, doesn't matter. Anything that you're worth, anything that's worth having or worth working toward, typically it's gonna take some time. So I think it was about two, two and a half years in before we really started to notice some decent growth on the YouTube. And, uh, quite frankly, I'm a terrible businessman. I never envisioned that the YouTube videos would want people or make people want to come fishing or diving with me. I know that sounds like a no-brainer, but I'm just not very business driven. Um, and it just, that's why they're named two different things, Dibs on Bottom and Key West Waterman. So we were about two, two and a half years in, and I started to notice that a lot of the subscribers and, uh, just the videos were drawing people to the business side of things, which was great. It helped out a lot. Around 2018 is when the charters started to pick up. 2000, it was about 2020 when the YouTube started to pick up. So it really helped continue to push the business forward. And I, I know I hadn't really talked about the financial side of things a whole lot in depth, but I will say, um, when it comes to following any dream or business or whatever, it's going to take a long time to get where you're going. Um, and I don't know what it looks like from the outside looking in, but I will say I've been here almost nine years. I think next month is my nine-year mark in Key West, and until about two years ago, so the first seven years, I really lived paycheck to paycheck. I struggled financially on the business side, personal side. It just, it's hard. I mean, especially in a place like this where it's touristy, there's a lot of competition, especially in the charter industry. So just keep that in mind. Like I said, I don't know what it looks like from the outside looking in, but I struggled for quite a bit of time. The last two years is where I really started to, uh, experience some financial freedom. It was right around the time we were able to buy the house. So YouTube's picking up, charters picking up. Um, this whole time, I had, I was paying my friend Darren to do all the editing on the YouTube. And it was about September, we're getting closer up to up to date. It was around August or September of last year. We just, we were kind of missing our mark and, um, with editing and getting things out on time, and the YouTube started to, um, started to falter because of that a little bit. We weren't getting out weekly episodes. Um, and the more you post on YouTube, the more YouTube promotes you because they obviously, they work for you, or you work for them, so they want to help you. They want you to post videos. They want you to do well. Um, so it was around September, August, I think I took over editing myself. And I'll say within, I think the past six months, so around January, February, I think we've done about double the growth as we did in the first two years. And that's just all the work that we put in. And I can't thank Darren enough, um, for, you know, helping me kind of lay the groundwork. Like I said, he was doing all the editing at the time and laying the groundwork and really getting it, helping me get the YouTube where it is today.
So today, I'm still running charters, obviously. And I talked about at the beginning of the episode, um, I still work, you know, six, seven days a week. I know that the YouTube kind of makes it look like we're just goofing off all the time, but, um, there, there is an end goal in mind. Um, and we're getting really close, closer than I've ever been, honestly. Me and Madeline are closer than we've ever been. Excuse me. So from here moving forward, I mean, the real goal is keep the YouTube going. I'd like to continue running charters. And I always get asked, if the YouTube gets big enough, would you ever stop running charters? And possibly, but I, I still think I would keep it open maybe two days a week or something, at least for my, my, um, long-term repeats that I have. I built a lot of great relationships with a lot of people, and I don't think I could ever fully get away from that. So we're working on that. Um, and if you're, you're wondering how you can support, you don't necessarily have to book a charter or anything like that. Um, you can buy a t-shirt, just share the channel, tell, tell a couple of friends of yours, go on a group chat and say, "Hey, check this channel out." Um, I mean, that goes a long way. If every subscriber told a friend to go subscribe that doesn't watch, I mean, hypothetically, you double the channel overnight. So buy a t-shirt, help, watch the channel, help share it. Um, if you're looking at moving down to the Keys, call my fiance, Madeline. I'll put her link in the description. She sells houses. She also runs paddle board tours. Um, so that's a big way you can support our future goals. From here, we're going to keep working. We're really working for, um, time freedom, obviously. And a long-term goal of ours is to hopefully, uh, purchase a home in the Pacific somewhere, where we could spend three to four months a year there and spend the majority of our time in Key West and kind of go back and forth. But other than that, I'm kind of winding down to the end. I did want to share a couple thoughts. First and foremost, I cannot thank everyone enough, whether it's you guys watching the channel, my family, my lovely fiance, all my friends, anyone who's helped support me get our help, helped me get to where I am today. I genuinely cannot thank you enough. All of my parents, my siblings, there's too many people to list. Um, I just genuinely am grateful, and I'm kind of mind-blown that people are even watching these videos and people, this video has been requested, um, as many times as it has, that people care enough to know where I've came from. It really is kind of a strange feeling that I'm getting used to. Um, and I'll kind of leave you with a thought, maybe a little bit of motivation for anyone who's trying to get out, just chase a dream. I will say something that really changed my life. I'll say success isn't probably one of the most ambiguous words there is out there. To me, success to me is time freedom. I want to do what I want, when I want. I don't want to tell any, I don't want anyone to tell me what I want to do. For the longest time, I thought it was money that I was after, and it turns out that was not it. It's this. I want to go fishing. I want to go diving. Hopefully, eventually, I, I will be only doing this for a living. Um, obviously, some part-time charters, but I would like to just have time freedom. That's, I think that's what life is about, and it's one of the hardest things to achieve. So that's what we're working towards.
Anyways, long-winded. I think success, uh, became attainable for me when I started following through. I think that's the difference between an unsuccessful and a successful person, the ability to follow through. It's really easy to talk about stuff, but when you're willing to take the action and follow through with that, I think is really where I started to become my version of successful. So other than that, that is all I got. Thank you guys so much for your time. If anyone is still watching, my chance, I know I've been rambling, but, um, if you have any questions, please feel free to leave them in the comments. I will get to them as I always do. It's getting a little hard to keep up with the comments, but I'm doing my best. If you've got a dream, go out there and chase it. I'm living proof. I did it. Um, nine and a half years ago, I was making $400 a week, and now I live here in Key West, and my version of paradise, it may not be everyone's, living in Key West with the one woman of my dreams, a few animals, and this is my backyard to get a fish and dive for a living. So get out there, do it. Thanks so much for watching, and I will see you guys on the next one. Later. You.