Full Throttle Marine
The Founding Story

Chapter 1

My name is James. Most people call me Jimmy.

I grew up in Northeast Florida. Jacksonville. The kind of place where you learn early that the water isn't something you visit — it's something you live around. Redfish. Flounder. Seatrout. My sons Jack and John were both born there. Those roots run deep.

In 1999, I graduated from Florida State with a mechanical engineering degree in thermal fluid systems. Which is a fancy way of saying I spent four years learning how air conditioners, wings, and propellers work. I loved it. Not because it was required — because it was genuinely fascinating to me. I like horsepower. I like machines. I like understanding why something works and why it doesn't.

That's not a professional interest. That's my passion.

But here's the thing about me that doesn't show up on a resume: I spent years investing in young people. Youth ministry at Church of Our Savior and St. Patrick's in Jacksonville. YP Ministries. Mission trips. Excursions. Coaching youth athletics with i9 Sports and Plano Sports Authority. Years of it. Team-centric environments where the goal wasn't just to win — it was to develop people. To watch someone figure out what they're made of.

I didn't do that work because it was strategic. I did it because it is amazing to see someone accomplish something they never thought they could do.

The engineering degree and the youth work might seem like two different things. They're not. Both are about systems. Both are about building something that functions the way it's supposed to. Both require patience, troubleshooting, and a willingness to do the work even when the results aren't immediate.

That combination — the technical foundation and the investment in people — is what everything else I've built is made of.

My wife and I have two sons. John and Jack. Both exceptional. Both homeschooled. Southwest Florida is home now — Palmetto, on the west coast — where we boat, fish, and show up for each other every single day.

That's the foundation. Everything else gets built on top of it.

Chapter 2

Some ideas come and go. This one didn't.

In 1999 — fresh out of FSU, new to the workforce — I began my journey as an entrepreneur. Working with friends and former co-workers, we founded a company during the DotCom heyday. The timing wasn't right. Life had other plans.

But the passion for bootstrapping stayed.

In 2018, we made a huge change. We left Florida and moved to Dallas, Texas for a job. While Texas is a lot like Florida in many ways, it also is very different. For the beach bum, salt-life Floridians, we were shocked. We enjoyed our time in Texas, but we also realized something was missing.

In 2021, I finally connected some dots and I built something. Here2Fish — a peer-to-peer boating and fishing platform connecting vessel owners with anglers who share a passion for the water. A concept I'd been carrying around since 2001 finally had a legal entity, a website, and a real shot.

That same year, my family made another bold move. We left North Texas — after realizing we were landlocked and restless — and relocated to Key Largo. And for two years, we fished. Nearly every day. Aboard our 2020 NauticStar 227 bay boat, Defiantly. That boat's name was not an accident.

There's something clarifying about getting back to the water after years away from it. You remember what matters. You remember what you're actually built for. Key Largo did that for us.

In 2023, we made our final move — Palmetto, Florida. West coast. Tampa Bay. Home.

Here2Fish is still running. It's grown into a family of properties — platforms, tools, and now a marine service company operating under the same parent entity. That 2001 idea became the foundation for everything that came after it.

I tell this part of the story because I want you to understand something: I am not someone who chases trends. I am someone who builds things slowly, deliberately, and for the long haul. When I commit to something, I'm not trying it out. I'm all in.

Full Throttle Marine is the same. This isn't a hobby job. This is the next chapter of a story that started a long time ago.

Chapter 3

In the fall of 2025, I taught shop class.

My boys are homeschooled. That's a choice my wife and I made deliberately, and we don't take it lightly. Part of that means I get to be the teacher sometimes. And in the fall of 2025, I decided the subject was going to be the marine industry. Hands-on. Real tools. Real problems. Real results.

The student was my son John. The project was his 1999 Mercury 90 ELPTO outboard engine, sitting on the back of a 1989 Ranger 680C — a 16-foot fiberglass bass boat we'd bought as a project. The goal was simple and measurable: get that boat from 28 miles per hour to 40 miles per hour by the end of the semester.

Simple goal. Not a simple path.

When we went to start the motor for the first time, it wouldn't run. At all. What was supposed to be a basic inspection turned into a full carburetor rebuild. Then we had a bogging problem under acceleration. We pulled the carbs again, replaced the floats. Still bogging. Turned out the problem wasn't inside the carbs — it was the external fuel line. Replaced the fuel hose, primer bulb, and water-separating fuel filter. Then the trim motor failed. Pulled the engine off the transom, replaced the trim assembly, reinstalled it, and raised the engine height on the transom to reduce lower-unit drag.

Then we got into propellers.

John visited General Propeller and talked through his setup with a woman named Ms. Gloria, who knew exactly what she was talking about. He did his research. Narrowed it to three props. Bought two — a Solas Rubex 13.25×17 and a PowerTech 13×19 — because he wanted to test both and understand the difference firsthand. That's the right instinct. That's an engineer's instinct.

The Rubex hit 36.2 MPH. The PowerTech hit 41.6 MPH.

Goal was 40. Final result: 41.6. A 48.6% improvement over where we started.

Most importantly — John learned a ton. How to do a compression test, rebuild a carburetor, troubleshoot a fuel system, diagnose a performance problem, and select a propeller based on data and testing rather than guesswork. He didn't learn that from a textbook. He learned it in the driveway, with grease on his hands, dropping screws into the bottom of an engine block and fishing them back out.

I taught shop class twice. Fall 2025 and Spring 2026, each time on real projects with real outcomes. And every time I walked through it, I kept thinking the same thing: this is exactly what's missing.

Not shop class specifically. The idea that young people can learn real skills, build real confidence, and produce real results without spending four years and a hundred thousand dollars to do it.

That thought didn't leave me alone.

Chapter 4

In November 2025, I attended a conference in Marco Island.

There was a speaker. His name is Ron Hetrick, an economist from Lightcast. And he stood up and laid out the state of the American labor market in a way that I haven't been able to stop thinking about since.

The picture he painted was this: we have a massive imbalance between supply and demand in the workforce. Too many graduates chasing too few jobs that actually require a degree. Meanwhile, in the skilled trades, the opposite is true — there aren't enough trained workers, the ones who exist are aging out, and nobody is coming behind them. The gap is enormous and it's getting worse.

I watched as a lady from a very prestigious Big 10 conference school that starts with the letter M and has blue and yellow in its colors stand up and ask Ron, what should we tell our graduating students? There was no good answer, at least not one that would make a graduate feel any better. 44% of students across the US are graduating with degrees in Business or Finance and 0% of the jobs have these degrees listed as the requirement. We're building the wrong kind of workers.

I sat in that room and felt something click.

The response to a labor crisis isn't to complain about it. It's to build something.

I am a mechanical engineer. I have spent decades investing in young people — on mission trips, on athletic fields, in classrooms and youth groups. I just spent a semester teaching my son marine mechanics in our driveway. I live in one of the most boat-dense states in the country. Florida has 1.1 million registered boats.

Ron Hetrick wasn't telling me something I didn't know in my gut. He was handing me the data to confirm it.

The trades need people. Young people need a path that doesn't start with debt. The marine industry needs a premium operator who takes the work seriously. And I had spent my entire adult life building the exact combination of skills, experience, and credibility to do something about all three at once.

That's when Next Wave became real.

Not just a marine service company. A structured pathway for young people — ages 18 to 24 — to enter a skilled trade, own a real business, and build actual net worth. For less than the cost of one year of in-state college tuition. With training, a protected territory, a proven system, and two founders on the other end of the phone.

So that's what we're doing.

Chapter 5

In early 2026, I had a discussion with David Webb.

David and I have been friends and business partners for a long time. The kind of friend you don't have to explain things to — he already knows the context. He already knows you. When I laid out what Full Throttle Marine was becoming, and where I was wanting to take it, he didn't need a pitch deck. He needed about one conversation.

He said yes.

David is now anchoring the St. Augustine and First Coast market. He brings 20 years of business, trades, and leadership experience. He is, by every measure, an equal partner in what we're building. But there's something that matters more to me than his resume: he was the first person to look at this vision and say I'm in.

There's a reason that matters. When you've been building something alone — carrying an idea, testing it, refining it, teaching it to your kid in the driveway — and then someone you trust completely looks at it and says yes, it changes the energy. It's not validation you were looking for. But it's the kind that means something when it comes.

David is my first follower. And that word — follower — undersells it. He's a co-founder. An equal. But the sequence matters: I built the thing, and then the person I trust most in the world decided to bet on it alongside me.

Now we're looking for a few more.

Not employees. Not warm bodies to fill a territory. People who want to build something. People who are mechanically curious and love being near the water. People who would rather earn while they learn than pay while they wait. Young operators who are 18 and ready to own their first business. Experienced people in the trades who are tired of building someone else's dock. Parents who are watching their kid fix engines in the garage and wondering if there's a real path for someone like that.

There is.

Full Throttle Marine is not a cheap service. We are not competing on price. We are competing on quality — the same way Chick-fil-A doesn't compete on being the cheapest chicken. We compete on reliability, professionalism, and doing the work right. Every time. The 7-step Full Throttle Experience. Photo reports. Flat-rate pricing. A brand that customers can trust.

That standard came from somewhere. It came from decades of caring about the outcome more than the shortcut. It came from youth ministry and coaching kids who needed someone to show up consistently. It came from a mechanical engineering degree and a love of machines and a semester teaching shop class in my driveway. It came from a 1989 Ranger bass boat that went from 28 to 41.6 miles per hour because we refused to quit troubleshooting.

This is not a franchise for people looking for a job. It is a franchise for people who want to build something real — and who have the hunger, the mechanical curiosity, and the willingness to do the work to make it happen.

David said yes. A few others have started the conversation.

We're looking for more.

If this story resonates with you — as a prospective operator, a co-founder, a parent, or someone who simply knows the right person — reach out.

The application comes directly to Jimmy and David. We respond in two business days — either with a discovery call or an honest "this isn't your fit." We won't waste your time.

Full Throttle Marine · Premium mobile marine service · Tampa Bay, FL · Here2Fish, LLC · ABYC Member · ftmarine.com