315. Breaking the Status Quo: Jeremy Delk’s Journey from Stock Broker to Multi-Industry Magnate

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The Daily Helping Episode 315: Jeremy Delk

Jeremy Delk: [00:00:00] Just get started in whatever it is. If it's you got a fulltime job and you're wanting to be an entrepreneur, get started. It doesn't mean you need to resign and mortgage your house and go all in on something, but build a website, do a focus group on Facebook. Just do something for yourself and set this little pass-fail ratio of like, "Hey, I'm going to go and spend $1,000 on this or I'm going to spend $2,000 on my idea," and then get there.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:00:31] Hello and welcome to The Daily Helping with Dr. Richard Shuster, food for the brain, knowledge from the experts, tools to win at life. I'm your host, Dr. Richard. Whoever you are, wherever you're from, and whatever you do, this is the show that is going to help you become the best version of yourself. Each episode you will hear from some of the most amazing, talented, and successful people on the planet who followed their passions and strived to help others. Join our movement to get a million people each day to commit acts of kindness for others. Together, we're going to make the world a better place. Are you ready? Because it's time for your Daily Helping. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of The Daily Helping Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Richard. And we have an amazing guest to share with you today, his name is Jeremy Delk. He's a serial entrepreneur with a passion for disrupting industries. And since 2001, his businesses have earned hundreds of millions in revenue. And he's created hundreds of jobs, hundreds of high paying jobs for Americans, as well as other notable distinctions. He's been featured everywhere. He's in Forbes, Inc., Entrepreneur, CNBC, Bloomberg, ABC, and others. Today, Delk Enterprises has holdings in biotech and health care, consumer brands, technology, building materials, and real estate development. Jeremy, welcome to The Daily Helping. It is awesome to have you with us today.

Jeremy Delk: [00:02:04] Thanks for having me, Dr. Richard. Appreciate it.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:02:05] Absolutely. So, you've done so many amazing things. I know that you have a passion for helping people. Anybody who loves disrupting is automatically somebody that I'm excited to talk to because disrupting is great and it changes the world. But I want to find out your kind of superhero origin story. So, let's hop in the Jeremy Delk time machine. Let's go back in the DeLorean. What is your superhero origin story? What put you on the path you're on today?

Jeremy Delk: [00:02:36] Yeah. So, I mean, I'm a small town kid. I grew up in Bardstown, Kentucky, which is like the bourbon capital of the world. So, Maker's Mark, Jim Beam, all of that is in my hometown. So, grew up there, you know, mostly a normal upbringing after I was ten. I lost my father when I was seven to a tragic motorbike accident. So, I would, retrospectively and a lot of sitting on some couches and a few hundred thousand dollars later with therapy, kind of, I think, looked at that as probably one of probably two or three pivotal moments in my life that really changed its trajectory. Prior to that, it was very normal, loving, kind of nuclear upbringing. And then, my dad was a breadwinner and you see that just shift, young mother and a younger brother who was two at the time and that shift from stability to just massive instability. At seven, you become quite cognizant of that. And I effectively had to kind of be the "man of the house," whatever that means. And, yeah, I think that's kind of what really shaped a lot of probably where my drive comes from and that determination of really kind of wanting to go and do more, see more and be more, and I think part of that is because you're not promised tomorrow. So, that's one big kind of piece of the story that kind of started there. I was left about $30,000 in an inheritance that was going to be used for college and I was going to get that at 18. So, when I was growing up in this very small town in Bardstown, that kind of big fish, small pond mentality, I knew I was getting this money and like, "Okay. Well, what do I want to do?" I knew I just wanted to get out. I didn't know where, but I wanted to get out of that small town. I loved it, it did really well, girls liked me, all that stuff, but I just wanted to get out and change it and learn and see something. So, to me, that was always New York City. And the only two things I knew about New York was the Mafia and Wall Street. Obviously watching movies, those are the two paths that you go. And my last name is Delk, so the Italian mob wasn't going to work for me. So, I started just reading Investor Business Daily and the Wall Street Journal and just really kind of nerding out. My mom had responsibly put that money in Disney stock and 20th Century Ultra Mutual Funds. And she was kind enough, it was a custodial account, and then she let me have trading access to it when I turned 18. So, I was self-taught. This is dating myself, this is probably 1997, 1998, anyone else with the market knowledge of kind of what was going on there, a lot of dot coms, a lot of high flyer stocks and stuff. I was able to trade that sitting in college on a Palm Pilot for, you know, $30,000 or 40,000, and I grew it to about 2 million bucks until, like, 2020. So, in two-and-a-half years, made a couple million dollars at 18, 19 years old, which was pretty cool. I subsequently blew that $2 million up in four days, which was pretty fucking awesome.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:06:00] What did you blow it on?

Jeremy Delk: [00:06:01] Well, I mean, the dot com era happened, so everyone's a genius in a bull market. But I was just so self-taught and naive and it was just easy and young, testosterone driven kid plus all that money, like, you couldn't tell me anything. And that was probably pivotal number two of like, "Fuck." It was a really hard, hard lesson. And the world's over, and I'm a failure, and you just have all that self-doubt and hate, and stuff. But the thing that helped me there is I didn't have a safety net. Like, as much as my mom would give me the shirt off her back, that's basically all that she could give me. My freshman summer, I bought a condo and I had bills. I had a nice Grand Cherokee. So, I had options, ready to pack it up and move back home and that would have been my story or I had to go figure out how to go and make rent. And that's what I did. I went out and started hustling side jobs, stayed in school. And through a very crooked, windy path of opportunities, I hit up with a guy that I was renting apartments. So, I was at a really nice townhouse and right beside me there was luxury apartments and this guy got relocated to Boston. I think he was from Chicago. And he was in temporary housing with Fidelity Investments. And I was getting a commission every time I would sell or rent an apartment. So, we had this little pool mixers. And at one of these mixers, I just started talking about the market. And he was impressed that I had a pretty good understanding and breadth of the market at such a young age. Asked how I did that and I told him the story, obviously thought it was stupid that I blew up 2 million bucks, but was impressed that I had even the acumen to kind of go through and do that stuff. So, he offered me a job. And three months later, through background checks and all the stuff that takes on with the big multinational like that, I converted to night school and started training for my Series 7 and Series 63 at 20. So, at the time, I was the youngest broker in Fidelity history to trade stocks. I was trading institutional equities up in Boston and then later to New York City. So, I wrote a book - that's behind me - called Without A Plan, and there's a lot more details, but I had this dream to get to New York City. It didn't ever include, you know, making 2 million bucks, blowing up $2 million. But that's kind of like an origin story up to my 20s pretty quick.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:08:30] One of the common themes I hear with people who create wealth when they're really young is almost somehow some way, they lose it and they lose all of it. But what happens after that, which is really seminal for, foundationally, what they're doing in the world today. Was that the case with you, too?

Jeremy Delk: [00:08:51] Yeah. And, look, I think it was the worst thing that happened to me at the time. Likely, the best thing that's ever happened to me in my life. Because it was just me, right? Had I not lost it all then, I could have lost it when I was 30 and I had kids, or 40. So, I'm a big believer that things don't happen to you, they happen for you. But it's hard in the fucking moment. In that moment, you're like, "Wait. Yesterday I was a millionaire. Today I'm worried about how I'm going to pay rent." It's tough. It's a tough feeling. But, yeah.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:09:24] So, let's take a few minutes, you mentioned Without A Plan, take us through a little bit about this book.

Jeremy Delk: [00:09:31] Yeah. So, the book was a painful process. I don't know if you've done one, Dr. Richard, or not. I wouldn't wish on my enemy. But, you know, it started off as a business book. And then, we finished it and I threw it away. And I threw it away because, you know, it felt a bit disingenuine, because while the stories were real and the content was accurate and we did a good job of really backing up references and things, I felt like it was only telling half the story. So, being an entrepreneur or being in business, I mean, anything, sometimes it's a very lonely process. And we have the human emotional side that we don't really talk about a lot, the personal side, and business is personal. So, the book now turned into more of a memoir-esque business book. And that was the hard part, is kind of telling a lot of really hard personal stories about growing up, losing my dad, and really kind of drilling into a lot of that. You know, we've all experienced loss. I'm not special. We've all experienced loss, but most of us don't deal with it the right way. So, I kind of showed those things. I showed a lot of vulnerabilities, and my personal journey, and then how those correlated to the business side. And the subtitle is A Memoir of Unbound Action and Failing My Way to Success, so it's really just pushing and kind of getting someone to take the first step. That's the most important thing. I think so many good ideas and businesses don't ever get started because we're so scared of failing and we never get started. And that's the other piece is just you shouldn't be scared of failure. It's really about embracing failure. And that's where the learning happens. It's not when you're 19. I was not learning at that point. I was just doing my thing, making money, and it was fine. But if I would have been learning, and understand how do I protect this and how do I go through and scale it, if I would have been open to learning, then I may not have blown that up. But it's hard to do. So, when you have those failure events, you're forced to kind of look back and triage to really learn or you can feel bad about yourself. So, those are the two different choices. And I really look at failure as a learning opportunity, and that's kind of what I talk about a lot.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:11:49] That resonates with me so strongly. For those who have listened to this show for a while, kind of the seminal moment for me was when I broke my spine. I started my first tech company in my early 20s and thought life was amazing until a kid ran a red light and broke my back. At the time, that was pretty horrible. But much like you and your lessons, that was, for me, the best thing that it could have ever possibly happened because it totally shifted the trajectory of my life. And so, this story very much resonates with me. And I know a bit about this book. I know that this book really is for the entrepreneur because people think entrepreneur is the sexiest thing in the world, and it's I'm my own boss and I can go to the gym when I want, get a haircut whenever I want, and do all these things. But there's great things about entrepreneurship, there's not so great things, and then there's stuff that'll rock your world. So, take us through some of those things that Without A Plan guides us through.

Jeremy Delk: [00:12:51] Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think you hit the nail on the head. I mean, I love Daymond John and Cuban and the guys at Shark Tank. I think it's phenomenal and it's a great entertaining show on ABC. But I think they've done a disservice. I'm a firm believer that you can't make an entrepreneur. You either are one or you're not. I think you can make a great business person. I think you can make a great leader, CEO, all those things. But entrepreneurship is sometimes a lonely, masochistic part of life that I don't wish on anyone. But for people that have it and are wired that way, you wouldn't and couldn't choose anything your way. So, I told you my up story about being at Fidelity. I was living in New York City, living in Chelsea, killing it, making great money, girls, young guy. I mean, living life. But what happened is I would have all these ideas and I would pitch these ideas to my bosses at Fidelity. And every time, it was just like, "Yeah, kid. Just keep going. Just keep your head down. Keep doing your thing." To even overcompensate for this, you hear how I speak. I don't sound like I'm from Kentucky. I sound like I'm from New York. Definitely not a country twang accent. And I actually convinced myself, "Well, fuck. Maybe my ideas are good, but it's because I have this accent that they're just still shooting them down." That's what kind of shaped how I even speak and my tonality, all those things, to try and get them because I knew I had good ideas, but they just kept on pushing them down. And then, towards the end I would just start making shit up that was so inconceivable, but just to see if they would bite on anything. And they said just keep going, keep doing your thing down because these guys are all millionaires, all making a million dollars a year, doing really, really well and living a great lifestyle. But in corporate America, it's not about disrupting. And you're not paid to be creative. You're paid to do a job and do it well and execute and kind of stay in your lane. And I saw at a young age like, fuck, I think this is where people like me go to die. Because I think if I would have stayed there for another five or ten years, it's like getting waterboarded. I mean, you're going to just start losing some of that stuff. You're just kind of the negative reinforcement over and over again. And you're like, "Fuck it." You're going to conform. And I think that's what made me leave at 21 and start my own company, Delk Enterprises, which is 20 plus years old now, was because I wanted to just do it my way. And I didn't know if I was going to make enough money. I didn't know if I was going to make as much I was making then. My parents thought I was crazy because I was making more than both of them combined. But I did it. And I think me losing that money and pulling myself back out, I think, is what gave me the confidence. Because so many people don't have the confidence in themselves that they can pull it off, so they just stay, they just stay in their lane in going forward. So, I try to share in this book and hopefully my stories in the good and the bad - I've had some bad setbacks - I'm still here and I'm still moving forward. And if you really look in, like, your audience, if you really look inward to yourself, there's a time that you can think back to or maybe a couple that you thought your world was over. Like, "It's all over. I'm losing my business. My wife is leaving me." All these things are tragic. But then, if you look back, fucking still here. And I think that's what we so quickly forget, is, humans are quite a resilient species and we can overcome a lot of these things. But most of the time we're our own problem because we're in our own head. Makes sense?

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:16:28] No, it makes total sense. And like I said, for me, that car accident I felt was pretty much the end of my world. And I'm sure for you as a 20 year old, having millions in the bank one day and the next day it's all gone, you think your life is over. Adversity really shapes who we are. And I think you said it really well, in those moments you have two choices - I'm paraphrasing, of course - you either get mad at whatever data you believe in and shake your fist at the sky and you blame them or you say What can I learn? What can I do differently? How can I be better from it?

Jeremy Delk: [00:17:06] Yeah. And throwing your fist in the sky is good. I think that's part of it. You need to do it. Which is harder that fucking part up. Like, "Cool. Oh, feel bad for yourself. That was me. Great. Cool. Awesome." None of that's productive. It may make you feel better. And, dude, like, four days after, I bathe myself in Jagermeister and watched Maria Bartiromo just rip my heart out. That was my process. I felt bad about myself. I'm a victim, and whatever. But being a victim and being all these things didn't pay my mortgage or my car payment. It just didn't. And that was the piece, you have to go through that process and you've got to kind of grieve and be upset. That's okay, but don't live there because that's not productive.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:17:54] Right. No, absolutely.

Jeremy Delk: [00:17:56] And the litmus test, like when you kind of go through that a little bit, the litmus test is like, "Great. Yeah, you're right. This sucks. It happened to me. Yeah, it's crazy." But is anything I'm doing right now helping me change my current state? And that's it. And if you can be honest with yourself, like, "No. It's probably not what makes me feel better. Okay. Cool." Well, then how long do you want to feel better? And then, how much time do you want to spend on actually fixing what you need to do?

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:18:20] No. I love this. This resonates with me. This is, I'm sure, touching people who are listening to this. I want to talk, though, about strategy. So, if you're listening to this, you're nodding along and you're like, "Yeah. This sounds like information I need." What are some strategies that you've utilized to avoid some of those pitfalls of entrepreneurship and find success?

Jeremy Delk: [00:18:44] Yeah. So, I mean, you mentioned disruptor, and I don't know, I think I've been called that. I've been called a lot of things, I'm sure. But I want to tell you about my approach. So, I think you can't go into things just trying to be a disruptor. It's a wrong approach. "Hey, I want to go through Dr. Richard, he has these assessments." I want to disrupt the assessment industry. That's my mission, I want to disrupt the assessment industry. That's my North Star. Well, everyone does it through these multiple choice questions, kind of go through to rank things. I want to do it where it's visually based and they just look at their eyes and they go left and right, like something just completely abnormal. That would never work. It would never work because you're just trying to disrupt for the sake of disrupting. And it doesn't always work, by the way. I think that's important, too. You mentioned my CV, Inc., 500 companies, all that stuff. A bunch of those, there's a way more fucking failures. So, don't get it twisted. I've done some good stuff but I've done a lot of trash too. But you can't go into it, "I just want to disrupt for the sake of disrupting." Where lightning in the bottle happens is when you are passionate and really just viscerally excited, viscerally excited and passionate about changing and solving a problem. That's it. For me, I got really, really excited about health care and my own health care journey and whatever. But I was just in rage and passion, like, how do I make this better for not myself, for everyone? Note, I didn't say make money. I wanted to solve this problem. The money kind of came. But I wanted to solve this problem. Where I've been able to become a disruptor, and it's happened two or three times really, really well for me, is, I don't give a fuck - and I'm sorry if I curse a lot. I did live in New York a long time. I don't give a fuck about how it is done. Period. End of story. I may have an understanding of competitors. I may have an understanding that Dr. Richard's assessment a little bit. I have some understanding, but I don't really care because I want to formulate my own approach to do it. Oftentimes, you're going to be told that it will never work and it's crazy. If you get that, fucking keep going because you're on the right track. If you get that, you're fucking great, then you're on the right track. I saw a meme yesterday and I'm going digress, I forget his name, the founder of OpenAI and ChatGPT. This is, like, three years, he's like, "Yeah. Basically, we're building this engine and we've made a soft promise to our investors that once we get to scale and enough data that we're going to ask it how we should monetize." And he got fucking laughed at. And then, like the meme right after that is obviously what's going on with ChatGPT. But everyone literally laughed at him when he said that. So, digressing back to my point, it's really just kind of obsessing over a problem that you are wanting to solve and understanding the why you want to do it. And it can't be for money. It has to be like, I want to do this because of Manny or I've got an accident. Whatever it is, you have to obsess over that problem and then really focus on the customer, whether it's B2B, B2C, whatever. What's that customer thinking? Where are they in their psychological frame when you're presented with an offer or learning about your product, good, or service? Where are they? And if you can put yourself in their shoes, then obsess over like, "Hey, if they don't buy my good product or service, I failed." Like, you've really let them down and their life's not going to be as good without it. That's the level that you need to be convincing yourself, obviously needs to be true, but that's where they are. So, going with that mindset, I think, is probably half the battle and that obsessive component of looking at things in your way, not caring about what your competition does. Because I do a ton of consulting, a ton of coaching, and most of the CEOs that I consult with or entrepreneurs, whomever, they start telling me all the things that their competitors are doing. I don't have competition. I don't. That's what I tell myself. There may be people in my business, but I do things in my industry, but I do something just way different. That's how you need to go through because you're wasting time. Again, you got to be aware, but be laser focused on what your journey is. Then, the second piece of advice that I kind of lean in as the biggest component is just get started. I mean, that's the biggest piece that I've heard so many people that have looked for money from me, or tried to pitch an investment idea, or just told me over a cocktail this great idea that they've got and like, "Wow. That's great. Where are you at?" "Oh. Well, I've really done much yet. But it's going to change the world, but I haven't gotten started." And that's this deep rooted component of what people are going to think of you if you fail, which is a whole other segment, probably.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:23:45] So, I love this. You said everybody who's an entrepreneur probably has some degree of failure along the way with one or two of their projects. I think I read the average person who has a net worth of a million or more has failed seven times before he figures one out that actually works. But with the entrepreneurial ventures that have crashed and burned, Jeremy, what are some of the pitfalls and red flags that you can alert people listening to this that maybe they could avoid?

Jeremy Delk: [00:24:22] Yeah. I mean, I think once you think you're the smartest person in the room and you've got it all figured out and you feel that you're just going to work and you're like, "Fuck, man. It's all working. I'm good," once you have that level of swagger and confidence, you need to pull over and just fucking grab a pad and paper, and then just start to really reassess like, "Okay. Cool. This is awesome. This is really good. But am I learning? Am I on everything?" Every entrepreneur, tell me if I'm wrong - I do live shows, too, so I ask people to call in because I like fucking just throwing out challenges - when you have no money at all, no customers, What am I going to spend this money on? What's the ad copy going to say because I need this ad to convert? Or what's this conference I'm going to go to? You are so focused on what you're going to do with this resource to get the result because you don't have another option. When you're super successful and everything's really kind of flying and going through, you get lazy. I mean, you've got consultants that manage consultants. You're just throwing money everywhere. You're just kind of going through and you have a lot of seepage. And it's okay because you're making so much money. That's when there's an opportunity to really learn and you could really take it from that level of scale. So, you're doing 10 million to go to 100, or 100 to a billion. It's those kind of break points in business that you kind of get it, either you stop learning and you get complacent or you're scared to break something as well. That's the other piece, "Hey. I don't want to go through and expand. I don't want to hire this new company. I don't want to buy that company as a bolt on acquisition," because you're scared of what might change. It's those pieces. Most people only try to learn and do these assessments when it blows up. I try to really look at these assessments when things are going really, really well because that scares me, because I've seen them go the other way.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:26:28] Love it. Jeremy, our time together has just flown by. I loved how refreshing your wisdom is. As you know, I ask everybody who comes on this show one question, and that is, what is your biggest helping? That one most important takeaway you'd love for somebody to have after listening to our chat today.

Jeremy Delk: [00:26:49] Yeah. I mean, I think believe in loving yourself, man. I talked a little bit about these ideas, so the answer to your question is just get started. Just get started in whatever it is. If it's you got a full time job and you're wanting to be an entrepreneur, get started. It doesn't mean you need to resign and mortgage your house and go all in on something, but build a website, do a focus group on Facebook. Just do something for yourself and set this little pass-fail ratio of like, "Hey, I'm going to go and spend $1,000 on this, or I'm going to spend $2,000 on my idea," and then get there. And then, predetermine what failure and success looks like. "Hey, I've got 100 people that like it, then maybe I go and spend $2,000 here." But just get started. Life's too short, man, and tomorrow isn't promised. So, yeah, that's it.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:27:39] I love it. Jeremy, where can people find out more about you online and get their hands on your book?

Jeremy Delk: [00:27:44] So, book is everywhere, Audible, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Target, wherever you would get books. It's called Without a Plan. And then, I'm Jeremy Delk, so jeremydelk.com, Jeremy S. Delk on all socials.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:27:58] Perfect. And we'll have everything Jeremy Delk at the show notes in thedailyhelping.com. But, Jeremy, I've loved our chat. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. It's been awesome.

Jeremy Delk: [00:28:08] Thanks, Dr. Richard. Appreciate it.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:28:10] Absolutely. And I appreciate each and every one of you who took time out of your day to listen to our conversation. If you liked it, if you were inspired, if you learned something, go give us a follow on Apple Podcasts and leave us a five star review, because that helps other people find the show. But most importantly, go out there today and do something nice for somebody else, even if you don't know who they are, and post it on your social media feeds using the hashtag #MyDailyHelping because the happiest people are those that help others.