Hi!
The problem is that I don't really understand where exactly to start in this game. For example, how to gain experience to unlock and how to maintain loyalty.
The wiki isn't very good at explaining exactly how to do it.
Pretty sure there isn't ONE way to get started and succeed, here is what I do.
I start with the MC and the free Slave as both workers and spend the first week or two reducing the Obedience Drain on my Slave to 0 so I can send them and my MC off to a distant village to harvest expensive resources to sell, to avoid losing to the Loan.
You do that by investing your initial money into items like shackles, collars etc. anything that has good -Obedience drain on it and anything that has +loyalty gain on it is a good bonus.
You probably noticed your MC has some skills in the Mansion Screen, Praise and Punish will reset the current obedience of your slaves to max and also give them a small amount of loyalty once per day so you use them when their obedience is very low to prevent them from escaping.
Once you got a slave with "infinite" obedience you can safely send them to do whatever you want and if you find a good way of making money to prevent the loan death you can freely experiment around.