How this 26-year-old influencer turned her side hustle into a full-time gig after quitting her Big Four accounting job

Tanvi Shah

After quitting her job at a Big Four accounting firm in May, Tanvi Shah became a full time content creator.

"People often look at what I do and think 'oh, she's just an influencer'," she told Insider. "But what I've managed to do is learn how to deliver a message, create campaigns for brands and come up with the whole concept, strategy, and deliver content across four platforms."

Shah fell out of love with the corporate world because of the impact it was having on her mental health She began to make money from her platforms last year after launching them as a side-hustle.

"The first step for me was just building a personal brand," Shah said. "I started talking about the things that other people weren't and made use of areas that I had expertise in." The 26-year-old spoke about the reality of the corporate world in TikTok videos and shared her experience of working as an auditor and consultant. "I shared the highs, lows, lack of work life balance and how working 16-hour days negatively impacted my mental health," Shah said. "These were things that a lot of people were going through, but no one was creating content about it." The British-Indian influencer found gaps in the market where she could add value and built her brand around other areas including the lack of representation of women and ethnic minorities in sport.

Jahangir Hussain

"I did a lot of work for free and during the first year there was a lot of unpaid work," she said. "It was really about building my portfolio, my network and my skill set."

Shah learned how to make her own videos. She used to use her phone to take pictures. She bought a camera, lighting and tripod to improve her content.

She said that this helped to elevate her content and make it a business.

Shah used to charge between five and fifteen dollars for a piece of content. Shah decided to set her rate based on how long it would take to create content, an hourly rate and then work backwards as to what the fee should be

Insider verified that she was paid £2,000 for a brand partnership to launch an active wear line. She has played sports for two decades. South Asian women are not represented in sports and fitness. I wanted to make it easier for women to get into fitness.

Shah pitched the idea of collaborating on the line instead of only being involved in promoting it as an ad or campaign and they collaborated to design the collection. She used a lot of South Asian people in the campaign.

Shah says there are many opportunities online including being behind the scenes and not just in front of the camera if you want to shift from a corporate job into full-time content creation.

She said to first build your personal brand and then build your portfolio. Identifying gaps in the market where you can really elevate your portfolio, your brand and build multiple streams of income is the next step.