A Gurgaon woman quit her lucrative corporate job at a Big 4 firm after deciding she did not want to spend her career working for someone else. Instead, she built a personal brand on LinkedIn and now earns six times her previous salary as a LinkedIn consultant!
Why a Big 4 employee walked away
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Riya Upreti, an entrepreneur, recently shared this success story of her friend Shivangi, who left her Rs 1.5 lakh job to build an independent business. In a post shared on X, Upreti shared details about her friend’s transition from a corporate employee to a LinkedIn consultant. This tale is less about income and more about what happens when someone realises working for someone else isn’t the same as working for yourself.“Even after earning ₹1.5L/month at a Big 4 in Gurugram, my friend Shivangi didn’t want to work,” the woman wrote on X. Shivangi didn’t quit her well-paid job because she didn’t like it. But somewhere along the line, she realised she wanted something more. Shivangi had watched Upreti build her own business. She knew it was possible. The question wasn’t whether she could do it, but what she could actually do. “She didn’t want to spend her life working for someone else. She had watched me build my business and knew it was possible to build something of her own.”But Shivangi wasn’t sure about being a content creator. The idea of becoming a content machine, building a personal brand from scratch and putting herself out there publicly didn’t resonate with who she was. That’s when her friend Upreti told her, “You don’t have to become a creator overnight. Start with LinkedIn.”Start there, the friend suggested. Post something. Test your ideas. See what sticks. There is no pressure for a grand personal brand launch. Nor is there a need to rebrand herself as a thought leader overnight. Just use LinkedIn.
Earning 6X her previous paycheque
And Shivangi did. She started posting. Soon, people started paying her to build their LinkedIn presence. Now, she works independently. “Today, she works with 8-9 clients, mostly from outside India, and earns 5-6X what she made at her job,” the friend revealed.She added, “The girl who was once scared to put herself out there is now building her own personal brand. And that’s what independence looks like to me: having the freedom to choose how you work, what you build and who you build it for.”
The possibilities beyond comfort
Shivangi’s success story says something that most professional gurus won’t. She quit her well-compensated job. In Gurgaon, earning Rs 1.5 lakh a month provides a solid middle-to-upper-middle-class security. It’s the kind of income that buys stability, makes rent easy and doesn’t keep you up at night. The job itself seemed too good to leave. A Big 4 firm means prestige, visibility and structure. A résumé line that carries weight.And yet, she walked away. This wasn’t about burnout or toxic work culture. But the realisation is that earning someone else’s profit target, meeting someone else’s deadlines and building someone else’s client list doesn’t add up to building something of your own. The big paycheque? That’s the comfort trap. She walked out of it and chased the opportunities, and now the job she loves gives her more.
