Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Anjha Thomas. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Anjha, appreciate you joining us today. Have you been able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen? Was it like that from day one? If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?
Content creation has come a long way from when I was 18 and pursuing it. I first got into modeling right out of high school, which my parents didn’t love, but I knew what I wanted to do. I was in a couple publications and also ended up on postcards in Japan at one point. Once I turned 21 I started bartending and that helped me get out of my shell, socialize, and meet new people all the time, which also opened the door for new opportunities. Fast forward to 10 years later, the pandemic hit, I quit my job and now I create content pretty much full time for brands. I’ve always known this is what I wanted to do, it’s just that it wasn’t as attainable back then like it is now. Brands find me more than I find them these days because of my portfolio on certain platforms. My fiancé is a professional videographer and so he’s been an amazing asset helping me create the visuals and elevating the overall quality of my content to get more brand deals. We probably do anywhere from 3-5 brand deals a month in the slower seasons and sometimes as many as 8-12 a month in the busier months and around the holidays. I don’t think there was anything I could’ve done differently to speed up the process, I think I’ve just been lucky with staying true to myself and being able to capitalize on doing what I love with the world we live in being so technology and social media based now.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I got into creating content because I was always on social media. I enjoyed making content that showed more of my personality and the things I liked to do. I’m most proud of being able to wake up every day and do what I love! There’s nothing like it and even though some days are more stressful than others, I’m able to hold myself to a certain standard of delivering quality content that I stand behind. It’s also still a job at the end of the day, no matter how much you love it and it’s fun, you’re still putting in the hours and the work and you are your own boss so you have to be disciplined about it in order to keep booking work and stay on the radar of different companies.
Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
Totally! I didn’t realize when I started making user generated content (UGC), that there are websites and platforms dedicated to finding brands to pitch yourself to or apps that help you create the content and that really helped me gain traction once I got into it more seriously.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
What drives me to continue my creative journey is that it’s always exciting and something new. It’s not the same thing day in day out. The more experience you have, the more you can potentially earn. It’s a matter of being consistent and treating it like a real job before it actually becomes one. I like being able to control how I spend my days and having the freedom to do what I want to do as I go.
Contact Info:
- Website: hoo.be/Anjhathomas
- Instagram: @anjhathomas
- Twitter: @anjhathomas
Image Credits
[email protected]