Help yourself to tea and take a seat anywhere.

It feels amazing to be able to make a living doing my dream job.

I think there are so few people who get to say that.

I love that you all just, like, jumped in and were like, I'm gonna learn something new tonight, even though I have no idea what it is.

The mission of this project is really just to build creative community.

I'm Liz Chick, I'm 27 years old.

I turned my side hustle into my dream job, and last month was able to bring in $25,000.

Hi, everybody.

Thank you so much for your attention.

My name is Liz. I'm the founder of RecCreate Collective, which is the studio that you're in tonight.

RecCreate Collective is a creative event space in Brooklyn, New York.

I help 20-somethings who are looking for creative outlets and community come together over all different kinds of creative arts and craft-focused events.

[RecCreate Collective hosts events and workshops about 15 times a month]

[Participants can learn how to knit, decorate cakes, draw still lifes and more]

So this is knit club with Ella Emhoff, she does a lot of these knitting events.

I just call it knit painting because I used to be a painter, and I treat all of the knits as paintings.

I have brought in close to $150,000 since starting this business last March.

[In January, it brought in about $25,000]

A lot of that goes to paying the artists.

A lot of it goes to materials and supplies for the workshops, as well as just like coffee and drinks and all of these things that kind of create these experiences.

The biggest expense is partnerships and artists.

Any partners that I have generally make 50% of the profit of those events, which gives them a take home of generally around $1,000.

So when you add up, if I'm doing like five of those a month, that's about $5,000.

So my first job out of school was working for a New York City park and I was working in just like a windowless office. There was like, nothing to do.

It's like staring at a computer. When I worked for a park, which was devastating.

It didn't seem like there were a lot of jobs out there that like, were a good fit for me.

I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur.

So I was just kind of waiting for my idea.

I started off experimenting with natural dye when I was just going crazy in me desk job.

I made this jacket, it's one of me favorite things I ever made.

So this is avocado pits and skins, they make pink which is pretty sick.

And so I was like, "Can't keep doing this for fun, got to figure out how to monetize it."

I made this botanical dye club kit.

[Liz started planning workshops so others could learn this technique] Let's see. There's like the fun dried florals. Um, there's this instructional guide.

And I started to really love that work and even see how it, like, might end up being a business, even if it was like still really in the early stages.

[Liz eventually took a part-time job so she could grow her business on the side]

So in September of 2022, while I was actually on a call resigning from my last full time job that I've ever had, I got an email.

It's kind of crazy.

I won $50,000 on accident, which ended up being like all of the seed money that started this project.

After tax, it was about $30,000 but was still like life-changing amount of money.

I had never had jobs that had allowed me to have any savings at all, let alone like a hefty fund to invest in something.

So I kept exploring options for spaces and things just kept falling through.

And then I like I had a friend who texted me about a space and I was like, "Ugh, I've kind of given up on this but whatever I guess I'll go see it."

Which as soon as I walked in, my jaw was on the floor.

I was like this beautiful, magical land, I don't know what it is, but like, I want it, like, this is amazing.

And I was like, I'll just take the risk and I'll apply for it on my own.

[Liz accepted, and signed the lease in March 2023 for $2000/month]

I have like $100,000 of student debt.

I was like, who let me sign this lease alone, I don't know.

[Student loan debt is a common barrier to entrepreneurship, but the cash infusion gave Liz a jumpstart]

I think as helpful as the money was in being what allowed me to get this space.

The most important thing was that if everything didn't work out exactly how I planned that, I would have like some kind of a safety net.

[She had subletters for about six months before taking over the entire space]

My side hustle really started focused on my art, and then when I moved into this space, was really able to focus on the production, the collaboration, not just around my own artistic practice, but around others.

[Liz hosted the first event, a collage club, in March 2023]

And then from there I just started like hosting more and more events and collaborating more and more.

It's like still shocking to me that you can just put something out on the internet and like, 30 strangers will just come like, that's amazing.

I think a huge challenge has just been like getting people in the door, like to some extent, to be able to have this be a financially sustainable business,

there just have to be enough events and enough people and working with a really small audience, that can be really challenging.

This is what a real beginner looks like.

And then every little thing just adds up.

Like all the art supplies up front.

Even the scissors and then folding chairs are shockingly expensive.

These vintage ones are like about $75 each, so you can kind of do the math on that.

It was terrifying and I didn't even want to do it.

It was my bosses who encouraged me.

They were like, maybe you just need to jump and do it.

I think I was paying myself about $2,000 a month and subsidizing a little bit with my savings over the summer.

I only started turning a profit in December, I believe, of 2023.

[Liz says she now pays herself $5,500 a month]

It's been cool to just like, be able to, like, validate all of the time and the energy and the love that, like I put into this thing, and to be able to, like, pay myself a livable wage, which I quite frankly have like, not maybe ever made before.

[Liz hired her first employees in February 2024]

No, I would never go back to an office job.

I guess you have to do what you have to do.

But I hope to never have to.

It feels amazing to be able to make a living doing my dream job.

I think there are so few people who get to say that.

And oh, am I getting emotional?

And yeah, I just feel like beyond grateful every day to like, wake up and do work that I love and to like be able to create a business that can sustain spaces like this and can like create room for people to be creative and to connect to here, like almost every single day.

Like how impactful this work is to people.

And that's just like, so special.