Jack Daly: Endurance athletics, business mindset, and living a bucket list life

welcome to another Co wisdom podcast we have Jack Del with us Jack is a special person has been in cells for quite a while for 33 years to be precise fought cancer fought various Iron Mans um he sent me some answers to the questions uh that I have for a book that I'm putting up together I was quite impressed so you guys are in for treat today this pod is brought to you by ppar.com if you want to start or scale your podcast go to B buyer.com Jack welcome to the B tell me a bit more about yourself and what you're up to nowadays oh Charles that opening question we could spend hours on if we're not careful uh so um you know my first uh my my first entrepreneurial experience was uh 12 years

old that was my first company I built and then when I put that aside between the ages of 26 and 46 years old uh I built six companies that went Nationwide in the United States sold a couple to Wall Street um and then um I got I lost my passion um for running a business and uh I enjoyed it for those 20 years but uh at 46 I said I want to try something else and got into the professional speaking business helping people all over the world scale their businesses and uh and while I was at that since my kids had grown up and left home and led their own lives um I decided to become an endurance athlete and uh ran 100 marathons um 15 full Iron Mans bunch of half Iron Mans and

uh here I am at 75 years old and I'm still flying all over the country and making a difference in people's lives both professionally and personally what did you learn doing 100 marathons wasn't like three enough so so that's a good a good question to ask my bucket list said to run a marathon and so I wanted to run it under four hours and I missed uh

running it under four hours by about 17 minutes so three months later I ran my second one and went under four so we would think that would be enough but I reflected on it and said you know having a go to run a marathon each year would keep me in good physical shape so I'm going to run one each year well I was running one a year for 10 years and they were all in California except one which is where I live and um my fourth Los Angeles Marathon A guy ran by me uh in the race with a shirt and on the back it was printed I ran a marathon in all 50 states so I caught back up with him and said tell me about this 50 state thing and he said there's

a club on the internet running a marathon in all 50 states so went home and I looked it up and I said well that that's a good bucket list I'll run a marathon in all 50 states and then I started building friends and seeing them at races and one of them said are you doing the continents and I said what do you mean and he said well there's a club on the internet marathoners running a marathon in all seven continents so I said well I'll put that on my bucket list now I had some favorite marathons and New York Boston that I'd run met up multiple times and all of a sudden I was at about 8 some marathons and I go well heck I'm close to 100 marathons I ought to run 100 marathons

so so I ran my H 100th marathon in Athens Greece on the marathon that was the very first ever and then I said that's enough so now my thing is my answer is different or the same as yours and that is well why am I going to run another one 101 103 I think it sounds pretty sexy to be 100 so I'm done right love the roundness of the number and mean I could answer that question till I have three Iron Man's now but just for the sake of getting to 10 I want to get to 10 I guess that's uh the the common team with us Maniacs quote unquote I want to know uh the your tips uh for running without busting your knees with for 100 marathons it's quite impressive yeah um you

know I was I just had a physical therapy appointment this morning and uh and and my therapist said you know she's in her 20s and she's going I have knee issues and I've only run two marathons and I said well first of all there's no only in front of the word Marathon if you ran a marathon never use the word only but she's in her 20s and has some knee sorness I've never had knee issues but here's one of the tips I would tell you listen to your body so you know an awful lot of people will push themselves um and their bodies telling them hey enough at this stage so I would listen to my body so an awful lot of people that are endurance races they've got all of the technology attached to

them and they're trying to hit certain marks on the technology um and I you know I'll have a Garmin watch on but it doesn't matter if the Garment watch is saying I'm falling off my Pace time um maybe my body isn't ready for that pace time today so light on light on the feet and uh Pace myself according to what my body's telling me love that then where did the Iron Man's came in because that's another Beast right there where did you discover sport so that's really funny because uh I was running a company and I had thousands of employees and one of the people in my home office that was an employee was an Iron Man and she came to me and she said with all the marathons you're doing you'd be perfect for

an Iron Man and I said well not exactly um I don't know how to swim and at 58 years old I did not know how to swim and the Iron Man starts with a 2.4 mile swim or 3.6k Swim however you want to measure it it's a long way right and it's on the clock as you know because you've done three and uh and I said so I don't know how to swim and she goes well then go find out how to swim you hire a coach and take lessons and practice and so the swimming was cool once I learned how to swim you know it's the shortest distance in the Iron Man it's the least amount of time in the Iron Man so um and it starts with the swim so then I just

needed to get a bike a triy bike and practice again you know if you're going to do 180k um you're going to have to get your butt used to sitting in the seat and then um and then the running well I probably ran more marathons than all the other Iron Men so that was a breeze there you go and then you do one why not do another and then all of a sudden then why not do one on all the continents except for Antarctica so I've got in my 15 Iron Man I've done all the continents except for Antarctica so what's missing for Antarctica um I mean they don't have an Iron Man there but they must have like a 40K or something um so I've run the marathon in Antarctica so there's two of

them one you go by plane and one go by boat um so so I've run that one uh but they you know they're not the Antarctica is not built for a bike and it's certainly not built to swim so so I don't think there'll be any iron men's being raced on Antarctica yeah well you know these Nordic people they uh they do cold swims now a 4 kilometer swim in the cold water that is something 40 minutes in the cold in the brutal cold even with a sweatsuit that would be interesting because the entrepreneurs in me is like let's build it if there's no Iron Man there we're GNA build one and it's going to be a mountain bike look I agree um here's the deal I was disappointed that Antarctica wasn't that difficult I

expected more snow I expect to be colder so the following year I ran the polar Circle marathon in um in Greenland and you want to talk about cold it was 25 degrees below zero the ice based for the whole 42k and the first 10K was snow to the knees and it's my number one favorite Marathon because when I was out there I'm going I am blessed to be this old and have the time and the money to be here and healthy enough to take it to the Finish Line it's a great great Marathon yeah and if you have snow up to the knees you're like yeah I might die here and the mind is like how the heck am I going to get through this you know so what's your your trick when I don't

know your gut is messing with you or uh you're you're getting like really tough muscle cramps when things are going really bad in your races what what's the mindset that kicks in yeah so the mindset is figure it out figure it out that is a motto of mine figure it out um my that motto exists in my businesses um three of my businesses were in the residential

mortgage lending business and when interest rates would go up double triple the competition would say no one's going to do a mortgage loan at X interest rate well somebody's going to need one and if you all leave they'll come to me and so some of my best business was done when I had cramps in my business and if you get cramps you rub them out I can remember my first marathon the reason I didn't go under four is because I got blisters at Mile 10 I never had blisters then I started to run differently to avoid the blisters and then by mile 17 my right leg cramped I went to rub it out and my left leg cramped and now both are cramped so I'm on the ground and the truck the truck is telling

me get in and we'll take you to the finish line and I said no I'm not taking truck to the Finish Line we'll work it out we'll figure it out and so I rubbed them out and then eventually got up and walked and then eventually jogged and by the time the race was over I was running again oh man you know you you know this Charles the majority of endurance race is run six Ines at a time it's the inches between your ears oh yeah 100% yeah the mindset and it's it's quite funny the proverbial uh truck that will take you to the Finish Line I once did the 10 kilomet swing in in Cancun and I was the slowest because I've never swam that that distance and I was going counter current and I

was going off course and two or three times there was this boat that came near me and they were like come on up come on up uh it's it's going to be better you know you're tired and all I was like sunburned I did like six hours or something like that um whether by jellyfish or by the sun it was like two third degree or something was pretty bad and yeah I never went up the [ __ ] boat you know like I was like dude you have you have the guts to say that to me right like five hours in that race and you want me to come up on your goddamn boat no that's not going to happen you know even if they're gonna unclos the the the race line for me for

the boats to come in again because they they had to close a passage was like I'm GNA finish that thing and so I did you know like how much times in in one's lifetime in an entrepreneur's lifetime does that pro provable truck or boat come next to you and and is like hey come on up here's the easy way um so with all of those races between you and me here's what I can tell you about me I never raced a race that I didn't want to quit at some point and then you just you got to go inside and have that conversation with yourself that says how bad do you want this how bad do you want it and hey pain is temporary anytime I've been in a dental chair and they're messing with

my mouth there's pain but when they're finished it's gone so it's temporary figure it out um when I ra when I raced on the east coast in West Virginia the airport that I was going to go to and fly home to California um was in Washington DC at dallis airport when I finished the race my ankles were in such pain I had to be wheel chaired onto the two planes that it took for me to get home and people are looking at me because I have my finished Marathon shirt and my Race medal on and they're wheelchairing me through the airport onto the plane but the race is up here it's up in the it's up in the head oh Jack you're crazy man you're like all sweaty you didn't even shower and you're touching

two plates oh that's beautiful right there yeah I mean I limped um my way to the finish line of my first uh Iron Man in kumel uh my ankle was totally destroyed you know my knee too you know that the disbalance you're talking about oh one one ankle goes then the knee goes on the other side you know to balance it out uh and yeah I literally limp my way people thought I was a zombie or something uh when I finished but I did it and that stays with you for for a lifetime now you say youve you've managed a thousand employees um how hard was that what kind of business hardships did you face over the years and how did you resolve those yes so that so so one of my companies had salespeople

and um that we were operating out of 100 locations in the US but um the key here is how many do you actually personally manage right so the span of control for any manager I would tell you is about 15 people um so as long as I can manage 15 Regional people that are in charge of a region and then those region people could have 15 um managers managing different parts of their territories all of a sudden there's a there's an or chart that's protecting me from being um 2600 people I have responsibility for them I have responsibility for the vision I have responsibility for the culture to create an environment where they want to excel that I can do for the whole 2600 we will hit these marks but in terms of day-to-day interactions

and feeling individual pains with each of 2600 that doesn't exist in my world I've got I've got less than 15 people that I need to get invested in to that degree so um uh you know every year I would give my top managers an outside thirdparty administered stress test and we bring the outsider in to discuss it with us around the conference room and one of my

managers one year said Can can you give us some perspective on Jack because Jack is the lowest stressed guy every year when we take this this this measurement tool and there was a pause and then the facilitators looked at him and he said um Jack doesn't get stress he gives stress and what he was saying is he sets a high Mark and then he does it along

with you and as long as you can be the model and he's pulling it off then the rest of us can say well if he can do it I can do it the other thing is look Charles you you do three three Iron Man you did three Iron Man and you know why you did the second and the third because you enjoyed the first and so as long as you're enjoying whatever you're doing the stress is way down I think the word enjoying this ring for the first uh the second one definitely the first one was nice was a half um the third one was fun in TR did you do that one by the way mon um mon in where yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah course very enjoyable I think it's one of my

favorites there you go yeah me too it was amazing so beautiful then wow that was a I will tell you KMEL is great U the the water is so clear yeah uh the the bike is all the way around the island uh and you know the run is right through the the the bar district and I I'm not even sure they know we're doing a race but they're cheering us yeah yeah yeah no it was it was great I might ruk CU melt just the Sun and I probably it under train but yeah no you're you're right um now you seem to have been at that mortgage company for a year so how much of a supercharge was that for your for what you learned there what do you mean by that yeah the mortgage

company is saw your LinkedIn was one year um platinum and wait Fleet Mortgage Group from 92 to 93 just stayed one year yeah the reason for that is that when I went there uh it was owned by a major Bank okay and I said to the bank your profile of what you're looking for is an outof the-box Entre entrepreneur I'm not sure that you guys can handle one like that um because you're a bank but if you if you start to put me into um organizational handcuffs then I I won't be staying long so uh the bank said no we'll give you free autonomy and then when I went uh they didn't know what free autonomy was so look if I'm not going to be happy doing what I'm doing um I'm like I don't

need a job I've never needed a job uh I pick careers and then be the best at that career so I just said back to the business right so speaking has been your core did you ever had a money number because it seems that you have you might have cracked that number quite early in your career yeah um let's just put it this way uh yeah the answer is yes uh I had a money and a net worth number that I put down in writing at 13 years old and said here's where I want to be at 30 and what do I need to get to that number what do I need to do and then follow the discipline so that number I made before I was 30 uh and at that stage if I

wanted to quote unquote retire that traditional word where you're not employed um I I could have done that from the age of 30 on um but you know I I I I don't work for money I I I I get paid but Modi M making money isn't what gets me up in the morning um having fun and doing something with results gets me up in the morning and the more it can be fun and enjoyable the better my results which then makes it more money so nowadays your purpose speaking I see some YPO there that's like what lights you up a bit of golf what else um so I you know my bucket list is a big item so if you went to my website at Jack dailysales.com uh I have over 400 items on

my bucket list 79% are complete and it's not a list you want to complete because by definition if the list is over you die so I'm always adding things onto the list and uh you know you mentioned golf so one of the bucket list items was to play the top 100 golf courses in the United States last August I completed the last four so I have that one done another thing on my bucket list was to visit all the US president's libraries and so I visited all of those and that bucket is done so let's talk about what's not done um I you know the ceremonial torch in the Olympics on my bucket list is to carry the torch during Olympics um another bucket list item is to meet a president in the United States

but not on a tour a personal visit and to fly with him on Air Force One and people will look at me and go well you're putting things on your bucket list that you know you're you're going to be able to do well you could have said that about a lot of things and so why not let's put it out there and see what happens I I I said I was going to fly a Jeet fighter plane and a whiteo member saw that on my bucket list and called me up and said have you done it and I said no he had a jet fighter plane he bought from the US Air Force and he met me we went up he he flew the plane I sat behind him and then all through our headset

he said so are you ready and I said ready for what and he said I'm going to pass the controls over to you and I flew a Jeff fighter plane with no flying instructions I mean so why not sit down as a human and just say what's going to turn your jets on what could you want to do what do you want to do where do you want want to go and start knocking things off your list that's quite amazing and I'm seeing a bunch of items there I guess the most significant one last year for you was fighting cancer how did that go so my doctor uh so so stage three um malignum melanoma top of my head uh operated in the first month of the pandemic when we're all in lockdown I'm in

the hospital kind of the worst place to be and uh and they took the top of my head off about the size of the palm of my hand and then it came back in my neck 8 months later and then I had to go through 54 weeks of treatment and now I'm cancer-free but here's what the doctor said afterwards he said there's three reasons why you kick cancer as to the curb one is there's advancement in science and medicine and today we have so many more tools that we can help you with so the advancement in medicine was one the second he said I haven't had a patient in 50 years that's your age and is in such good physical shape so you were able to take all of this prescriptive things and it didn't

slow you down but he said the third reason was more powerful than the first two and that is I never recognized I had cancer what I mean by that is I didn't I didn't sit in a corner and cower I I I didn't stay up at night worrying and whether R is going to die or not I I got up and lived lived a big full life every every single day and he said no one no one at this Hospital would ever know that what you dealt with I mean I'm in the cancer center and everybody that's there is getting their treatments for an hour and a half two hours I'm there too getting mine and I'm sitting there wearing an Iron Man finisher shirt or a marathon finisher shirt the rest of them are

looking like they're dying and um everyone's coming in with someone else to hold their hand a a spouse a relative a friend I never had anybody come with me on any one of those times I'm just going over there and get my cancer treatment and then I'm going to go out for a run I mean let's get on with life here so that attitude that attitude is what prevailed so inspiring yeah you're Jack um do you want to live forever if you would have the possibility so on my bucket list and it's been there since I was 28 is to live to 125 and people used to laugh at me when I said it and uh at 28 years old I said this if I take good care of myself physically and to the age

of 75 by that time they'll they'll have science to figure out how to take me but if I hand medic if I hand the doctors in the medical world if they if I hand him a 75y old beat up guy who did a bunch of drugs and smoked and didn't take care of himself physically well they're not going to work on me they're not going to inject the science so here I am just last month turned 75 and my doctors are telling me man you're more fit than a guy's in his 40s yeah so you look like it so combine so combine so combine taking care of yourself physically with how I am wired in the 6 Ines between my ears and um I think I got a great shot at lasting longer than most

anyone else and you know what as long as we're enjoying the time we're on the planet that'll be worthwhile if I find myself where hey um being older is not going to be any more fun all I'm doing is sitting around going to doctors and being in pain well I just ass soon move on and see what's we see what's ahead after this life there you go where can people find out more about you Jack the easiest thing to do is um go to my website and I have two of them one of them is called jackd sales.com and the other one's called Jack DA's lifeby design.com and uh and the light by Design is based on my most recent book uh it's my 10th book and it's called Jack DA's light by Design and

it walks people through a lot of what we've talked about here today Charles about how do you how do you take on a bucket list H how do you ra how do you race these races how do you take care of yourself physically H how do you make the money you want to make uh in the life and what the life you want to lead