I dreamed of having my own merchandise line since the first time I saw an embroidery machine embroid a baseball cap in a store where I worked the weekends as a 17-year-old boy.
When I started my coaching business, I never thought about combining the two till I received a message from a client: “What you said today, you should put that on a t-shirt.”

T-shirt were a bit expensive at first, so I tried some postcards till I had the confidence that I could do the “big step”.
I started my crowdfunding campaign on Patreon, but that was a bit scary and “Weird!” Still, I got some donations on www.patreon.com/therecycledpirate and some on my PayPal, https://paypal.me/therecycledpirate, but the real breakthrough came when two men who I admired, promised to invest in my plan.

A hundred fair trade organic cotton t-shirts where shipped the day the country where they were shipped from, India, went in lockdown and for four months I was left in insecurity whether I would lose that dream, that I managed to built up.

Nothing was further from the truth. I applied for an Active Chance grant (a project by Heliconia Caribea) to build my website and hopefully reach more people with more inspiration and as the grant was approved my shirts came in, and I had WORK to do!

By a miracle (from South Africa) a car landed in my hands, I ordered enamel mugs with my Stay Weird quote, another 240 organic cotton shirts and I have these awesome ambassadors (see picture) for the Netherlands, the USA and from England showing me to never ever give up on your dreams.

You just have to dream a little bit more or a little bit harder, and sometimes you have to dream a little bit different.

But if you dream that dream, and you believe in that dream, you can make it a tiny reality. And a tiny reality, can become a big one. Because I’m still dreaming.
Join me in my dreams, on Patreon, on PayPal or contact me on andy@therecycledpirate.com on how we can dream together.