I started selling online in 1997, way before it was cool to sell online. It wasn’t because I wanted to start an online business, but to have money to party with my friends.

I was living in Portugal, a European country with perfect weather, beautiful beaches, and the 4th most peaceful country on earth!

Even though I had a decent 9-5 job, I still struggled to stretch my salary until the end of the month, so I always kept my eyes open to new opportunities.

One day I saw some wooden statues for sale on a window display of a store, they were hand-carved statues of people and animals. I wanted to buy every single one for myself, but the reality is that I couldn’t afford a single one.

Because the storefront was very hidden, I started to imagine how many other people with money would have bought all those statues if they only knew they existed.

On the drive home I started thinking about that “new American website that has auctions”, and maybe I could sell there…

That new website was eBay, and that day I opened an account (that I still have 23 years later) and I found out that I could sell things on ebay.com since there was no eBay in Portugal.

Is this dropshipping? 

The next day, I took my camera to work (no smartphone yet) and took pictures of all the statues in the store.
When I got home I uploaded them all to eBay with a 100% markup, and my plan was to sell the item on my picture, collect the money, then go back to the store, buy it, and ship it to the customer in the USA.

What I did back in 1997, today would be a weird form of drop-shipping.
Since I didn’t know that term, so I called it “Selling the Picture” because the picture was the only thing I owned at the time.

With time, I realized that selling unique, handmade products wasn’t scalable, because there was only one of each.
And if someone bought the item from the store before me, I had to refund the and get bad feedback.

Years later, I stumbled across a Chinese website called DH Gate and started buying products in bulk. From cell phone cases, (the main brand at that time was Nokia) to the first android tablets, to mini motorcycles!

A few years after that I started creating my own private label products, and switched to sourcing from Alibaba, although I’ve never had any issues with DH Gate.

I discovered podcasts and audiobooks.

The amount of free information out there had my mind blown, and I got a huge feeling of loss for not knowing about podcasts all those years

So, I started binge-listening to podcasts for several hours every day. While driving, while working, in bed, and I even set up waterproof speakers inside the shower.

My mindset finally changed to be more “GIVE” instead of “GIVE ME” and I fell in love with the idea of helping others.

With over 20 years of experience, I didn’t need to feel “Imposter Syndrome”, and I decided to start my own podcast, and remove the things I didn’t like from all the podcasts I was listening too: Advertising!

Until then, I was always a very private person online, because I saw social media as a gossip tool and a way for competitors to take my ideas.

In 2016 when I started my podcast, I still had my Facebook account private, my Instagram Private, had never used my Twitter account and my LinkedIn didn’t even have a Picture!

Now, I love social media as a tool to spread knowledge and information that can change people’s lives just like it changed mine. “

Quin Amorim