Full-Time Hustle: Entrepreneur Nina Luke’s Tips for Making Your Side Hustle Your Main Focus!
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- December 28, 2021
Tax-professional-turned entrepreneur-and-coach Nina Luke looked at COVID as the perfect time to start sharing her business tips and tricks with clients in a whole new way. She spent 15 years doing taxes for burgeoning businesses as the founder of FST Investments. But, all the while, she noticed how her clients could be doing more, making more, and being more satisfied professionally.
Today, during the Great Resignation – the post-COVID itch to change careers – she has pivoted to concentrating on helping entrepreneurs move from side hustlers into full-time business owners. Her clients are shocked and thrilled that they are now making more money than they believed was possible. They are working for themselves, making their own hours, spending time with their families, and living life on their terms.
Luke’s advice focuses on business structures that will save money and lower the tax burden for those just starting, and she offers a wide range of coaching. Here, Luke offered us some of her best advice for going from side gig to business owner.
Luke believes that if she can do it, you can too. She moved from full-time tax pro to professional entrepreneur and coach that helps others become successful business owners. She is inspired and inspiring to her clients. The Long Beach, California-native suggests that those looking for confirmation that they can accomplish their dreams merely look at her story – and the stories of other entrepreneurs around them – as they shift side hustles into full-time dream jobs.
She suggests connecting with her for coaching on the topic and joining local networking groups to meet others who can inform and inspire them.
As American workers leave unfulfilling jobs en masse post-pandemic, her services are more in-demand than ever. Those that seek her out are ready to finally take that next step in becoming their own boss after a long, global period of time to reassess what was working in their lives, as well as what wasn’t.
In addition to tax issues and general inspiration, her tailored coaching program can teach prospective business owners about financing, using business credit, extending their education and employment, how to form a legal entity, and more.
Even though Nina Luke began her career at a much lower place than today, she always knew she was bound for better. She was wise enough to know that she had to watch, learn, and wait for her opportunity. Luke started her journey in the tax field at the well-known Liberty Tax Service franchise. After four years of growth – and knowing she had the skills to pay the bills for herself and her kids – she became the owner of a franchise herself.
Not to say it was easy, it wasn’t. Luke had virtually nothing for a downpayment on a business loan, so she was stuck with a high-interest rate that made profits hard to grasp in the first several years. Her credit was also a mess, and she was barely treading water.
The business failed – but Luke knew why. The next time around, she made none of the same mistakes when she got back in the saddle and became the founder of FST Investments. Now, she teaches others her hard-learned lessons.
For Luke, her main reason for being a business owner was to have the ability to provide for and spend quality time with her two kids. But the main priority will be different for every business owner. Luke was a widow at an early age with a son and daughter. For her, being able to be at every recital and game – to play full-time mom, dad, and business superstar – is what drove her.
The tax world helped to meet this need. “It worked because tax season was from January to April, and then I could be off for the rest of the year. That very first year, with FST, I made enough to take off for the whole summer and be with my kids, which cemented my love for the field.”
Keeping her priority at the forefront of her mind has made her a happy success. She is grateful that she was in her childrens’ lives much more than other working moms and credits her kids with her success. Even though they are now coming into their own at 14 and 21 years old, they still motivate her each day.
About Nina Luke
FST Investments is a small business consulting company that helps sole proprietors become successful business owners. The Founder, Nina Luke, is a veteran in the credit and tax industry who has helped hundreds of entrepreneurs save thousands on taxes and build their businesses with a firm foundation. Click here to schedule a free consultation: https://www.fstinvestments.com/.
