Your comment implies that "divine intervention" has little to do with it, but I would argue that he was at the right place, at the right time, with the right passion, and then did a lot of hard work that could have easily turned into nothing (financially), but just so happened to turn into something. He implies that he was close to working in a cube farm himself.

Just supplying the more jaded view here...coming from someone who has tried to take his skills into the freelance market for a few months and is now going back to the cube farm. :)