I haven't mentioned this yet that I, once again, made a living from my hobby but this time as a hip-hop dancer. Together with friends from college, we formed a crew, and we escalated very quickly by winning some local competitions. Hence becoming a freelancer after I graduated was the only option for me to juggling between designing and dancing.

As a freelancer, I found that it wasn't easy for me selling out only the visual mockups. At that time, I just had a simple strategy to secure the deals by providing a comprehensive service, including front-end development, CMS configurations, and server setup. That went on for about two years until I had a motorcycle accident that made me stay at home and sit in a wheelchair for almost three months. In my recovery days, aside from contemplating my life and career, I did some research on what kind of things I can work fully at home. Until one day, I stumbled upon 99designs, Themeforest, and Dribbble – And that was the beginning when I started working with remote clients and building my online presence.

I won several contests, got a platinum membership on 99designs, made some passive income from Themeforest and started to upload my design on Dribbble. The only thing I did was trying to creating some opportunities. I also slowly shifted from doing everything to specialize in design. In 2013, one of the contests that I won brought me into the startup scene in Singapore. I worked closely with the team in preparing their minimum viable product. It's a startup with a mission of building a marketplace for services. I worked with them until they pivoted their business at the end of 2013.

Fast-forward to 2015, I finished my dance career (our last performance), I, then started to focus more on my career as a designer. I started a platform for product designer in Indonesia to learn and thrive, along with my friend, Dwinawan. I led the first product design team at Bukalapak. I helped Skillshare to design a new feature – And also worked with these awesome clients: Double Dot Media, Etobee, Decotick, Stickearn, Yors, Kode, and Dana Nikah.

Since mid-2017, I have been dedicating most of the time working with Hanno, a fully-remote digital product team that helps health and wellness companies deliver customer-centered digital experiences.