Hi, Rachel. This is a really good question! thanks for asking that. When I was doing the Google UX certificate, I was doing my first projects. So. The first one I did with family and friends, just to get the idea, and also to start practicing to interview. Next I started to look for real users. For exemplo, I have a project about seamstresses, so I went on Facebook and joined all the groups. I wrote a small e-book about how they could charge more for their services, and I would send this e-book for free to whoever answer my survey. Inside the survey I also put a question where I would ask for their number, in case they wanted to keep participating. It was a sucess. I got many real users to answer the survey and also for doing usability tests. I hope that helps. I wrote a full article about this: https://zidailma.medium.com/how-to-get-users-to-answer-your-surveys-for-free-ux-projects-35cb787dec94