Most entrepreneurs are told they need a world-changing idea. But what if that is the wrong goal? What if the better goal is to build something that changes your world?
My guest today is Jay Sapovits, founder of Ink’d Stores, a branded merchandise, custom apparel, promotional products, and online store company.
Jay’s path was not built around a perfect plan or a Silicon Valley-style breakthrough. In fact, Jay makes a powerful point: the idea is usually not the business.
Execution is the business. Courage is the business. Seeing a problem, offering a solution, and taking action is the business. Jay has experienced reinvention, public failure, financial pressure, and the difficult process of rebuilding.
He’s also built a company he loves, in an industry where no one was waiting for one more competitor to show up.
This is a conversation about being scared to stay, scared to leave, finding courage through desperation, learning from failure, and building a business that may not change the world, but can absolutely change your world.
https://inkdstores.com
Mike Konrad entered the electronics manufacturing industry in 1985. Four decades later, he continues to dedicate his career to advancing reliability within the industry. In 1992, he founded Aqueous Technologies, an equipment manufacturer serving the electronics sector. Becoming an entrepreneur was never part of his plan, he simply had a passion for a product he designed. When his employer declined to build it, he realized the only way forward was to create it himself.
Mike entered business with strong technical skills but no business acumen. His early assets were ego, passion, arrogance, ignorance, and above all, a poor assessment of risk. Ironically, those traits proved useful in the beginning, ignorance really was bliss. But as his company grew, Mike recognized that those same traits could lead to its downfall. To survive, he had to transform himself, developing business acumen, adopting sustainable strategies, and evolving from reckless enthusiasm into purposeful leadership.
Today, with 40 years of industry experience, Mike shares both his technical expertise and his entrepreneurial journey, offering lessons from personal and professional growth, the near-misses that almost derailed him, and the strategies that carried him forward. He is also a strong advocate of “conscious marketing”, moving beyond traditional chest-thumping advertising toward education-driven authority building. By offering value through knowledge rather than hype, Mike helps organizations connect with a new generation of decision-makers who prefer independent research over bold claims.
