About

“From Rags”

So Who Is Kenneth Christensen?

– I am a self made entrepreneur, investor, and precious metal consultant. When not traveling, I run a very diverse recycling company based out of Sayreville, NJ. I started from nothing and I’d like to call this “The Diary of a Self-Made Entrepreneur”

“To Riches”

My First Successful Businesses

It all began when I started my first job at about 12 years old. I was delivering newspapers to all the homes in my neighborhood while riding a bicycle. I only made money off of tips, therefore I found that providing the homeowner with excellent customer service and placing the newspaper in the exact spot that they requested, made for a better business model and a lot more money. I eventually moved towards placing flyers for snow removal and lawn maintenance inside of each newspaper while I was rolling each newspaper up before delivery. I went on to hiring some of my friends and giving them a couple dollars to lend me a helping hand after school.

At about 15 years of age I started pumping gas into boats at a marina where my father kept his boat. I was pumping gas after high school and on weekends. They had an old pick-up truck on the property that was stick shift that they would let me drive so this is where learned how to drive stick shift among other life lessons.  I figured that considering I was there anyway pumping gas, why not sell bait fish to all of the fisherman while they were fueling their boats up? I thought this was a great idea and I was always thinking of ways to make more money. The only problem was, how do I get those bait fish to sell? After all, you need bait fish in order to sell them, Right? I obtained a boat and a couple commercial traps and began collecting the bait fish after work and on my days off so that I can sell them while I was working the pumps. This was an adventageous move, as I was not only being paid hourly while I was pumping the fuel but was also making money off of the fisherman by selling them the bait fish in pint and quart size quantities. This only increased the revenue of the marina for their fuel sales because not only can the boat owners fill their boats up with fuel at the marina, but now they also can also pick up the bait fish that they needed for their fishing trip also. One stop shopping. The money from the bait fish and the tips were rolling in. Boat owners used to call me and tell me to make sure that their bait traps were filled before they got down to their boat for their morning fishing trip. They paid extra for this service. I never let them down and made sure that their traps were always full and ready for them as per their request. This turned out to be quite the success and I began selling the bait fish to the local marinas who then also began distributing the bait fish that they purchased from me. I was selling the bait fish for 1/2 of the price of the local bait shops and became very well known. I quickly expanded and was known up and down the river for having the most quantity and quality of bait fish and never running out. I knew all of the best and “secret” spots to put the traps where all of the bait fish “hung out”. This venture abruptly came to an end after the local bait shops threatened to call the fish and game commission on me because I was running them out of business.

At about 17 years old I was washing vans for a real estate company who later went out of business. I was the best employee they had and they took terrible advantage of me by having me wash vans in 0-degree weather. It was not what I signed up for as I was hired in the middle of summer when I was in high school.  The water would actually freeze onto the vans while I was washing them which made me unable to get the vans washed properly! I was so extremely grateful one day when they allowed me to drive the vans to the car wash to get them washed. I thought to myself, “wow am I lucky to have this job!”. It also made me feel really good that they trusted me enough to do so. I drove a 1989 Chevy Cavalier that was gifted to me by my neighbors (or adopted grandparents you could say) to and from high school. I was so thankful to have been given that car.  Every day after school, if I wasn’t working, I would be applying layer upon layer of wax onto that vehicle. That car had more invested into it than what it was actually worth. ;o) I would be made fun of for driving that ’89 Cavalier that I drove by many of my classmates but I was just thankful to have that vehicle. Little did the ones that were making fun of me know, they were making an absolute entrepreneurial legend out of me by poking fun of me for driving that car. It was like dumping fuel on a fire in the sense of giving me the drive to work harder and harder and harder to obtain nicer things.

My Career

After high school, I started Middlesex County College at night while I started my venture of building a scrap metal recycling business. Similar to the one that my father was running, but not quite. I was more specialized in purchasing certain materials such as precious metal bearing catalytic converters whereas my father was service related towards dealerships. My father purchased me a 1996 Ford Pick-up truck that we built sides on although he recommended that I start with a little bit of a larger truck. I didn’t take his advice because I was scared to drive anything larger than a pick-up truck at that point in my life. After all, I was only 17 years old. I needed to build sides on my pickup truck so that I can fit more materials on the back of it but I didn’t know how to weld. After many empty promises from my Uncle of saying that he would help me build the metal sides on my truck so that I can fit more material, my father hired a welder for me to get the job done and get me out to work. I cut my hands on the leftover scrap metal build when I was fooling around and fell on top of the metal in which I still have those scars to this day to remind me of that inscident. When my old high school friends would see me in that truck, they envied me and no long made fun of me. They seen I was going places and I later employed many of those same “friends”. That was when I began the chore of building relationships with not only automobile repair shops but also salvage yard customers. I found that with going to college, I was unable to fully apply myself in this venture due to attending college most days and working. Hence, I switched my college hours from day to night while deciding whether or not I was going to stick with college or continue building a business.

Uphill Battle

I made my decision, I’m going to be a business owner! I was willing to accept the fact that it was going to be tough but I was willing to accept the necessary sacrifices to achieve my goals. I did what I loved and most importantly, loved what I did. Most auto repair shops and salvage yards would turn me down when I stopped in to solicit my business. After being turned down, I just never took no for an answer. Mind you, I had no sales experience and was just acting on impulse and instinct. I walked in and said, “Hi Sir, my name is Ken Christensen and I am with Christensen Recycling, we pay top market value for radiators, wheels, catalytic converters, batteries and transmissions.” I eagerly explained, “We are a direct refiner of the catalytic converters!” Most of the time they would respond with “I don’t have anything” or “No, I have a guy” or “I’ll keep you in mind” or “Nope, not interested” in a rude fashion. I would stay polite and reply with, “I understand, have a great day and thank you for your time!” I kept on trying and never gave up and would never take no for an answer. The customers who did give me a chance, I gave the best customer service to and always made sure that they were happy and smiling after I purchased their materials.

Starting to Roll

My persistence was starting to pay off. Things were starting to look better and I was starting to gain more relationships and getting more “yes’s”. Eventually certain customers gave me the chance to clean out their repair shops on a regular basis. After a few years of being in business, I finally purchased a larger truck and I was able to fit more material so that I can take my business to a new level. The word was out, and people started to hear about my company, and the great prices that we were offering. The more volume of auto parts I was able to obtain, the more negotiation I had in regards to the pricing in which I would receive from the consumers when I sold. I was willing to work a lot closer on the materials than most of my competitors which enabled me to obtain more customers. We were still selling most of our auto parts locally and felt as though we were not able to be as competitive as we would like to be with the wholesale customers and were losing business because of it. Reason being, we were not dealing direct and were unable to achieve the most up-to-date market pricing from our consumers. I didn’t know where I could sell the catalytic converters for a higher value other than just reselling them to the local catalytic converter buyer so I would look on the computer for any and all information that I could obtain for countless hours. Computers and the internet was not as popular 17 years ago then they are today. I searched the internet, hour after hour, day after day, week after week, month after month, until I finally found a refiner that would give the “little guy” a chance. I saved up a whole garage full of catalytic converters. The garage was filled up from the floor to the ceiling with thousands of catalytic converters. I began cutting the catalytic converters open and separating the shell from the insides so that I was able to send the insides to a refinery for processing and refining. I cut open about 250 of these catalytic converters by hand with a sawzal and went through 1000s of saw zal blades. My employee was holding these catalytic converters for me while I cut them with the saw zal. After a while I said, “enough is enough.” I called the refinery and asked them if there was any other way of separating the inside of the catalytic converter from the shell and they replied with, “well yes, we can charge you $1 per converter to cut them open for you and then process them.” I did not hesitate with saying “YES” and wondering to myself why they didn’t tell me about that option sooner. 

Becoming a Real Business

Shortly after our first trip to the refinery we realized that we were able to obtain an extra 5 – 10% from the refiner with dealing directly vs reselling our catalytic converters that we were purchasing. I rented a warehouse and purchased hydraulic cutting equipment, grinders, mills, and blenders and starting a processing facility. Since then, we have expanded to a larger building, continued to grow and have brought my company to the forefront of the automotive catalytic converter precious metal recycling industry. I am now a member of the International Precious Metal Institute and have also incorporated into my company ferrous and non ferrous metal recycling, a garbage division and have also brought on and merged two other smaller companies. Where we will go next, who knows!