Started overseas, right after dropping from school and landed my first job by pure chance, in the so-called creative industry. Had no money, knew nothing and ha

Started overseas, right after dropping from school and landed my first job by pure chance, in the so-called creative industry. Had no money, knew nothing and had to learn the ropes in real life situation. The fact that this was a completely different environment helped a lot. I had to start from scratch and pay attention to everything. Luck played a large part. My first client was a big ad agency so this gave me a bit of a buffer time and also helped to get new clients—that job led to the next, building a portfolio and clients references. For a long time, I didn't know how to market myself, however. It took me years to learn some of the basics in that regard. These are things you only realize in hindsight, after trials and errors, in my case. When you are freelancing one of the danger is that you get a false sense of freedom. When things go well you tend to believe that you are at the steering wheel of your career. But at the end of the day, you depend very much on clients and things that are out of your control. If not careful you can quickly become expendable.