How I Got My First Professional Client

This is the story of how I got my first professional client.

Before anything else, I should define what I mean by "professional client." For me, it means serious work with a real company, not a friend or someone paying a small amount for a quick logo.

If I counted those early small jobs, then my first client would have been years earlier, probably someone from my gaming era or an independent artist who needed simple design help.

But this story is about the first real step.

Two Clients, Almost at the Same Time

If I remember correctly, my first professional clients arrived almost simultaneously.

One was Ron Parida, based in Los Angeles, who ran a creative agency and contacted me for motion graphics on a Red Bull project. It was especially exciting because it was connected to music, and at that time music and design were the two things I cared about most.

The project was inspired by the format of COLORS, but developed for Red Bull.

For me, it felt like a huge responsibility. I was very young, had limited experience, and was honestly afraid of making mistakes. It was also my first time doing fully professional work in English. I had done internships in English before, but this was a different level.

On top of that, the project was well paid, so I had to quickly register as self-employed in Spain to invoice properly. I did all of this while I was on Erasmus in Manchester, which is one reason my Erasmus experience was so unconventional compared to most people I know (had to decline 99% of parties and attended few classes during the weekday).

The second client was a French startup in the gaming-tech space, and they also contacted me for motion-related work.

How They Found Me

I did not find these clients. They found me.

They discovered my work through Instagram.

At that time, I was posting almost every day, or at least four to five times per week. The work was getting strong engagement, often landing on the Explore page and reaching a much wider audience.

That visibility brought a lot of inbound interest from both people and companies asking for services.

One key reason was the technique I was exploring at the time: mixed media tracking. Back then, it was far less common. The main reference for me was @eduard_ov from Kyiv, who pioneered using that technique in ways it was not originally intended for.

I adapted that approach to my own visual world, closer to lifestyle photography and portrait work with friends, and it clicked.

I still remember doing my first test in Barcelona and realizing immediately that it worked. After that, I built my own repeatable process to produce that style faster and more consistently.

What Happened Next

Those two first clients opened the door to everything that followed.

From there, I moved into bigger projects, more complex productions, and collaborations with major brands and artists. That path eventually included work connected to companies like Adidas, Nike, and Universal, and projects involving VFX for high-profile music artists.

This was around October 2018, and it became a major turning point in my career.