There is nothing for sale here. Gathering data to solve issues for
Entrepreneurs: Join a 20 minute interview - you can help
There is nothing for sale here. Gathering data to solve issues for
Entrepreneurs: Join a 20 minute interview - you can help
Why do entrepreneurs choose that lifestyle and career? What process did they follow to select the type of business they wanted to build?
Reddit and countless other platforms and forums are filled with people who took the plunge and now find themselves in crisis, struggling to make payroll. Anxiety and raw fear haunt their days, and they can’t sleep at night.
"What happened? How do I solve this? Should I quit?
I need answers."
We are currently interviewing a large number of small business entrepreneurs. These interviews are approximately 20 minutes in length and focus on their businesses, their market niche selection process, and reasons for investing their time and resources in their chosen niche.
We are currently gathering insights from entrepreneurs about the challenges they've encountered and how they navigated them—or, in some cases, what made those challenges insurmountable. We are particularly interested in understanding the most critical issues faced and the impact of the toughest challenges on their lives.
We would like to invite you to contribute to this project. Please provide your first name and email address so we can schedule a 20-minute Zoom or phone call with you. Rest assured that all information you share will be kept strictly anonymous, and we will never share your email address, name, or any other details without your explicit written consent.
Hello, I'm Steve Maxey. Welcome to the Never Give Up Research Project.
I am a lifelong serial entrepreneur, having been the Founder and CEO of about a half dozen companies including Wall Street investment banking, the very first online auto sales site where customers could buy a vehicle, finance it on our site and deliver the car to their home. That is common now but in 1999 it was a big deal. The company was eCarCredit.com.
I started and built other businesses, including a reverse logistics company that served the largest US big box retailers, another company that sold online thousands of off-lease vehicles for the largest banks in the US, and a company in the medical billing space that earned seven figures a year in net profits. I raised Venture Capital for several of my businesses.
I listed some of my businesses here because I know quite a bit about being a small business entrepreneur. That career choice can lead to wealth or tremendous pain and hardship—sometimes both.
As an entrepreneur, I believe that the process we use to make decisions about which market niche to enter and how to operate there to maximize our success is much more dependent on creativity, imagination, intuition, and gut feel than being reliant on just the financials. Of course, metrics and financials are very important, but numbers are about looking backward at measurement... but it is listening to your gut that determines the trajectory and outcome of your business. There are many examples, but let's single out Steve Jobs. Was he a by-the-numbers guy, or did his extraordinary gut feel and vision primarily determine his decisions?
Through the Never Give Up project, we aim to gather comprehensive data to uncover critical insights and then reveal the principles behind achieving maximum success for all entrepreneurial ventures.