I was obsessed with the whole internet thing early on. Companies were buying up domain names and flipping them for a fortune. I wanted to understand it.
There were no HTML classes back then. So I bought a book and hand-coded my first website, for an alumni group I belonged to, when the company I worked for moved out of state.
Years later I went for a Webmaster Certification and found out I already knew most of what they were teaching.
I freelanced on the side too, brochures and flyers for a commercial real estate office.
Then people started finding me by word of mouth. That’s when I got serious. That, and seeing ads promising a website in 30 minutes for $99.