Side Hustling for Creatives with Candace Howze | Ep. 30

• After graduating college with a communications/journalism background, Candace needed income to handle student loans. She began with Google searches and freelance websites, taking any small job to build a portfolio before pitching larger clients.

I would just get any little job that I could to sort of build up a portfolio until I felt that I was at a level where I could start reaching out to clients.

• Candace works as a college counselor and maintains freelance writing and photography on the side. She stresses that structure is the only way to fit everything in without feeling overwhelmed.

You do have time. You just have to commit yourself to trusting the fact that, hey, if I put myself on a schedule and I give myself a certain amount of time for each task, it's going to get done at some point.

• Candace maintains an active online presence sharing her work and reaches out proactively to organizations. She also volunteers at events like the Art of Cool jazz festival to stay connected to the arts community and create future paid opportunities.

It's so important that people understand what you do and that they are aware of your skills because a lot of times we are familiar with ourselves. So we just assume that everyone... just know what we're doing. And that's not the case.

• Candace recommends creating concrete savings or debt-payoff targets, then breaking them into monthly freelance income goals. This helps determine how many unpaid gigs are acceptable and prevents being taken advantage of.

I might like to make X amount of dollars in freelance work in the month of November. So that kind of helps me to break down how many quote unquote free jobs can I take.