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

• Tanvi Shah started building a personal brand online as a side-hustle during the pandemic.
• She learned to shoot photos, edit videos and create campaigns for brands by watching YouTube videos.

Tanvi Shah has been a full-time content creator for four months after deciding to quit her job at a Big Four accounting firm in May.

"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 says she fell out of love with the corporate world because of the impact it was having on her mental health. She launched her platforms on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and LinkedIn as a side-hustle and started to monetize them last year.

"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.

"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 watched YouTube videos to learn how to edit her own videos. For the first year she used to take photos using her iPhone. She then invested in improving the quality of her content by buying a camera, lighting and tripods.

"This helped to elevate my content and take it from unpaid work to a business and gaining brand partnerships that I could monetize," she said.

Shah used to charge between £5 ($5.72) and £15 ($17.16) for a piece of content like an Instagram story or TikTok video. Shah now sets her rate based on how long it would take to create content, an hourly rate and then works backwards as to what the fee should be.

She was recently paid £2,000 (£2,324) for a brand partnership to launch an activewear line, which Insider verified by viewing a bank statement.

"I have played sports professionally and recreationally for 20 years," she said. "As an athlete I noticed the lack of representation of South Asian women in sports and fitness. I wanted to use my platform to encourage more 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 jointly designed the collection. She used content creators, presenters, DJs and fashion influencers all from a South Asian background in the campaign.

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

"First build your personal brand and gain that experience by building your portfolio," she said. "After that, identify gaps in the market where you can really elevate your portfolio, your brand and build multiple streams of income."