What do you do when life gives you every reason to stop, but something inside you refuses to quit?
My guest today is Jay Setchell, a Marine Corps veteran, serial entrepreneur, inventor, author, and the voice behind Never Quit Trying. Jay’s life story is not theoretical inspiration. It is lived experience.
He grew up on a working farm, served in the Marine Corps, survived multiple near-death experiences, and has endured more than seventy surgeries.
His book, The Strength Within You: It’s Always Too Soon to Quit, explores the power of mindset, preparation, faith, resilience, and personal responsibility in the face of overwhelming adversity.
But this conversation is not just about survival. It is about what we do after the setback, after the accident, after the diagnosis, after the business failure, after life changes the plan.
For entrepreneurs, Jay’s message is especially relevant because building a business often requires the same thing rebuilding a life requires: discipline, ownership, courage, and the willingness to keep going when motivation is gone.
Jay’s Website:
Never Quit Trying
https://neverquittrying.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.
