About

About the site:

This site was launched in 2008 as a guide to help those that don’t have a lot of time but want to use that little bit of time to create more income.

A full-time mom, full-time student, or a full-time employee needs to make the most of the little time they have to transition from living paycheck to paycheck to living off of their wealth.

While finishing my master’s program I created a step wise process that I followed to establish passive income outside of my W2 that built our net worth to a point that I could walk away from my job. But I didn’t. I liked my job.

This may not sound super amazing but I was able to do it while raising a family, maintaining a life, and working full time. It is my journey fueled on a sandwich of the academic and the practical. It’s based on fundamental truths and focuses heavily on mitigating risk. While not a fast path it is a proven and safe path.

At ShyEntrepreneur you will find resources that will stretch your understanding of your situation and challenge you as you take your next steps. You will be given a chance to see behind the curtain of wealth creation and given an opportunity to uncover the secrets of financial freedom.

I invite you to subscribe to our emailing list and leave comments for others to chew on.

About Me

Hi my name is TJ. I am a servant of Christ, a husband, father, engineer, and entrepreneur. While working full time I was a W2preneur. I love knowing how things work. For me the most intriguing processes to understand are businesses and wealth creation.

The Family

The lights for the direction of my professional life turned on for me while in high school. I enjoyed paintball and had purchased a sniper style gun complete with a home made silencer. Realizing the effectiveness of the silencer I ripped it apart to figure out how it was made. After determining how one was made, I built a few and all my friends and I were equipped for sniper paintball.

When the time came to sell my gun I listed it on Ebay. Not thinking much about it I added little note saying “If you would like a silencer email me and I will build one for $29.00” Shortly after the auction went live I started receiving emails from people wanting to buy silencers.
I couldn’t believe it, people actually wanted to pay me $29.00 for something that cost me less than $5.00 and didn’t take more than an hour to produce. I hit the pay day!!!

Well, not so much. After four silencers where in the mail, and the money was in the account I was contacted by an individual who informed me of the legal ramifications for selling silencers. Needless to say, my short lived operation was shut down. What I learned however was that it is not difficult to make a quality product, bring it to the market, and make money. This was my push into engineering and business.

For the first part of my career, I was fortunate enough to land a spot with an up-and-coming brand that manufactured its own products. What a ride. Along with a world class team we were able to grow the brand for 3.5 million/year to just under 20 million/year over an eight-year period. If you do the math on this, it is over a 20% year over year growth. Simply amazing in the world of domestic manufacturing.

Somewhere during that period, I realized what we were building we were building for someone else. This isn’t a bad thing, and it challenged me. The question I asked myself was: Why is the majority of my day spent building someone else’s asset? There are a lot of good answers to this question. Many of the answers have to do with minimizing risk. …so, what if there was a way to both minimize risk and build your own assets at the same time?

Education

Masters: Washington State University

  • METM: Masters of Engineering and Technology Management

Undergrad: Eastern Washington University

  • BS: Mechanical Engineering Technology
  • BS: Technology/Manufacturing
  • Minors: Business Administration, Physics

School of Hard Knocks: The Real World

  • Online content sites
  • Industrial services
  • CNC machine shop
  • Real-estate

Comments

5 responses to “About”

  1. Luzi Avatar
    Luzi

    I can tell that you will be putting a lots of efforts into your blog. Keep posting the favorable work.Some really helpful information in it. Bookmarked. Nice to talk to your site. Thanks!

    1. TJ Avatar
      TJ

      I am glad you like it. There is so much out there in the way of business development and management, this will most certainly be a life long endeavor.

  2. Trevor Howitt Avatar

    An inspiring start to becoming an entrepreneur. It just takes one good idea and persistance. Trevor

    1. TJ Avatar
      TJ

      Persistence and focus are the kernel to many successful individuals.

  3. mary Avatar
    mary

    Thank you for this–it was an inspiration!

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