I was bored at work in one day, in summer 2007, and I was searching on internet free tests to test my knowledge. I did that previously in 2000 when BrainBench was new, and I even got physical diplomas from them for free. So, in this summer I searched for BrainBench again, to test me to see how much I grew during these years, and I was disappointed to find now BB was paid. So during my search I found this site oDesk, which was a freelancer site, but also allowed you to take tests. Didn't cared about freelancing part, only testing. So I took some HTML, Delphi, SQL tests there in that day. On Delphi I was proud that I was on 2nd place, while on rest I was in top 5% of all people that tested. I published that and forget about them.
In November I receive an e-mail. Someone was contacting me on my oDesk account. I was like "wtf is oDesk?". Then I remembered about the day in summer whne I got bored and made an account on that site. Long story short, that was my first client, he hired me and I realized how short I was selling myself to companies in my country. In March 2008 I quit from the day job and went full freelancer ever since. Btw, oDesk, after acquired Elance, got renamed Upwork. I still, partially, get new clients on Upwork, though most of my new clients are now through recommendations from my previous clients.
If I wasn't bored that day, if I didn't created that account, I'd still be working for a soulless corporation in my country.