No Broke Months For Salespeople - What Every Entrepreneur Needs to Learn Before Losing It All — Jeremy Delk on No Broke Months

Episode Date: November 4, 2025

What you’ll learn in this episode:● How to turn failure into your ultimate advantage● The mindset shift that eliminates fear and self-doubt● Why consistency beats talent every time● How to define your own version of success — not someone else’s● The secret to building wealth through learning and leverageGUEST: Jeremy Delk Jeremy Delk is a serial entrepreneur with a passion for disrupting industries. Born and raised in a small-town, blue-collar household, he jumped into entrepreneurial ventures with the naivety of a child and the tenacity of a tycoon. Since 2001, Jeremy’s businesses have earned hundreds of millions in revenue, created hundreds of high-paying American jobs, and earned one of Inc. 500’s fastest-growing company distinctions.FacebookInstagramAmazon  To find out more about Dan Rochon and the CPI Community, you can check these links:Website: No Broke MonthsPodcast: No Broke Months for Salespeople PodcastInstagram: @donrochonxFacebook: Dan RochonLinkedIn: Dan RochonTeach to Sell Preorder: Teach to Sell: Why Top Performers Never Sell – And What They Do Instead

You're listening to No Broke Months for Salespeople Podcast. In this episode of the No Broke Months for Salespeople podcast, Dan Rochon sits down with serial entrepreneur and investor Jeremy Delk, founder of Delk Enterprises. Jeremy shares how losing $2 million at age 19 became the foundation for his success. And why embracing failure, staying curious, and defining your own version of success are key to building wealth and freedom. My name is Dan Roshan. Today I'm joined with Jeremy Delt. And we're going to talk about how to overcome failure, setbacks, and building success in real estate and beyond. And Jeremy Delt is an entrepreneur, an investor, and founder of DELK Enterprises. And since launching his first company in 2001, he's built and scaled business across biotech, health care, real estate, consumer goods, and generated, you know, a little bit of change, like hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue, right?

And so his journey started with day trading in college where he learned quickly, failure sucks. And it's a powerful teacher. And he's carried that mindset in every venture that he's led since then. So welcome, Jeremy. How are you? Doing good, Dan. Thanks for having me, man. My pleasure.

My pleasure. So before we get the overcoming failure setbacks and building success, give us a little bit of a 30,000 viewpoint of who is Jeremy Dock? Yeah, so I'm a small town kid from a town called Bardstown, Kentucky. So probably known most notably for the bourbon capital of the world. So Jim B, Maker's Mark, all that's in our town. When I was growing up there, probably 30,000, 40,000 people. So kind of a, you know, very so much a small town. I always had this yearning to want to go and do more, see more, and be more.

And that's what ended up through a very windy road I talk about in the book. It took me to Wall Street. in early and short but successful career on Wall Street as an institutional equity trader. And then about 25 years ago, for those you guys watching, I don't even have great hair anymore, it's all gone. But 25 years ago, I started a company called Delc Enterprises, as Dan mentioned. And yeah, I've been an entrepreneur overnight success, 25 years in the making, man. I mean, I don't know if the 25-year-old Jeremy or the 25-year-old Dan, if we're good advertisements,

given the lack of hair that either of us possess. You know, it's like, hey, the 25-year-old guy, this is your future, just so you know. Exactly. There's something in there. There's something in there. So that's a lot of, you know, a lot of things that you've done and things that you've, you know, have experienced through your career.

And so today, like, you know, know, we want to talk about, you know, failure and setbacks and building success. And I bet that you probably align with me where, like, for me, I don't even recognize failure. I just recognize, I recognize learning opportunities and I recognize process. And so there's, you know, there's, there's, there's, there's way more setbacks and, you know, proceed failures in business, at least from my perspective, of my experience than success. Yet everyone, you know, boast about their success, and, you know, that's what's visible. But how do you, tell us how you relate to failure and setbacks. Yeah, no, it's great leading. I mean, I think, I think it's,

you know, it starts at such a young age, right? Even at school, right? Where we put this negative connotation around failure, right? I got it at my score. I'm failure. And like, I just think that's the wrong, the wrong lens to be looking at it. You know, when I was, you know, day trading a $30,000 inheritance to two million bucks i didn't learn anything at all in that i mean i was i just got more cocky more egotistical as a 19 testosterone filled kid but um when i learned was when i lost it all in four days right now in the moment you lost two million bucks in four days yeah yeah that's a bad week yeah it was a bad week uh qualcom and jds uniface this is this is the late 90s early 2000 and a little thing called the dot-com bust.

And yeah, I mean, I was invincible, right, until I wasn't. So in that moment, I was the complete failure, right? I mean, I lost, not only to, like, and that's something that you don't talk about in failure, right? Okay, you lost the money, but that's not what goes to your head. It's like yourself is like you really internalize. Like, I'm a failure. Was everyone think about me?

I lost my mind. I'm going to go out to my mom. Like, mom can help me. Like, all of this internalization that we kind of realized in front of, For me, the positive thing is I had no tightroar, I had no net, right? I was walking the tightrope without a net. You know, there was no backstop for me. I'd made all that money, but I'd, you know, at my freshman year in college, I had bought, you know,

a luxury condo with 20 foot ceilings in a fireplace and like all these cool things, brand new grand Cherokee. So I still had expenses and a college, like how am I going to pay for all these things, right? And I had two, two paths to go, fork in the road, like, figure it out or go home to my mom of failure in Kentucky. And, like, that was just not going to be my story. So after about four or five days of drinking myself to sleep to, you know, watching Maria Bartaromo wake me up on Squackbox, I guess like, okay, well, fuck, this isn't going to really, like, what are you going to do now? Like, at this point, you know, you're not helping the problem. you're only probably making it worse.

So in the moment, and it took me years to retrospectively look back on it, but that was probably one of the top two or three things that's ever happened to me in my life, like losing two million bucks. Now, hopefully I speak, write books and try and tell people like how not to lose $2 million to learn the lesson. It's way cheaper. But what it's done is it's shifted it, right? Because it's changed the way, you know, failure is one thing.

It's the fear part that really hurts, that really kind of makes it so tough for people to, you know, start the business, ask to go to marry or ask go to a date, buy the company, make the hire, whatever it is. It's the fear and it's the fear of failure that is all against self-reflected, right, or self-perceived. You know, I talk about this all the time. No one cares about you, right, at all. Maybe your mom does. My mom does, I think. but no one else really cares about you. We all have our own lives.

Dan, you have your problems. I've got my problems. Like, you may be an interesting story and, like, cool, have this distraction, but we really don't care unless it affects us. And the sooner you come to that, you know, realization that, like, you're having all this noise in your head talking about, if I do this, if I do this, no one gives a shit.

So then once you kind of like, okay, who cares what anyone thinks, right? Whether I fail or not, because they really don't. once you kind of peel that part back the next piece and this is like the easy hack for you is you know humans are quite smart and intelligent you know species we you know go to things that drive pleasure right we like that and we try to block out pain or avoid it and whatever so trauma death we've all lost people we've all had trauma you know we don't really celebrate those components you go to a funeral you know it's sad when the death happens you're really sad when they kind of lower the casket, then you go to a bereavement dinner. And then a couple of days later,

your life's back to normal, right? We kind of block those out. So I'm the last guy that's going to tell you to look back in the rearview mirror throughout your whole life. But there's value in glancing back. And especially when you're at this, you're a crossroad. Hopefully it's not losing $2 million in four days. But you're at that crossroads of what to do. And like, I'm on the edge. I need to take that step. I need to make that leap. But I don't have the courage to go do it. What made it for me, and this is like, that's why I wrote the book on just like practicality. Hold on. What's the title of the book? It's called Without a Plan. Okay. Yeah, I'm kind of waiting to get that out there. Yeah. But like why I wrote the book is I'm just

sick of people just talking like theory and bullshit. So what I kind of gave a playbook the last 20-something years of how and why I did what I've done. But when I started Delke Enterprises, the only reason I started Delke Enterprises or had the courage to start Delke Enterprises was because I lost a $2 million. I had pulled myself back up. I got a job as an institutional equity trader on Wall Street with Fidelity in Boston, then New York, making, you know, a nice, mid-sized six-figure income way more than my parents who work for the post office, right?

In a small town of Kentucky, too, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm living in Chelsea. Like, yeah, so I'm, exactly, I got a $6,000 a month apartment. man like just whatever and i went out of my own and all i said to myself was is there a world that you can blow two million dollars in four days starting this business and there wasn't and so like okay well i fucking came back from it if it didn't work i can go back to wall street i and i took this bet very early right i didn't have wife kids any of those things so i could take those risk um it's

harder for folks that have come there because it's more layers of things that are in their in their brain from a fear perspective. But that was it. It was that simple component of like, can you do it? So bringing that back so it's applicable to you, Dan, I guarantee you at least one time, probably several, in your business and your life, you've like, this is it. It's all over.

I'm a failure. I've lost it. The lawsuit's going to end me. I can't make, whatever the thing is. And think about it right now. Because you were there. I don't know. Just once.

Only once. Yeah, yeah. I say in jest. Yeah, yeah. But like, so I don't know if it was last week, last year, whatever but we all have it and we block it out but use that and like because like dude we're pretty like you know with the cockroaches of the top species man we're pretty hard to get rid of and pretty hard to kill we can we are resilient but we forget about that resiliency sometimes so if you

can harness that inner power of like I'm okay I can do this and then remove the fear pack like what you said it's the learning you know one of two things are going to happen when you make that first step maybe it doesn't have to be leaving your high figure six figure job to start the business with, you know, zero in the bank, but, you know, whatever your thing is, you're going to have two outcomes. One, it's hopefully not going to work because if it, or it works, if it doesn't work, two things. You've learned more now, like, okay, that didn't work, but you've also had confidence, like, oh, wow, I'm still alive.

The world hasn't ended, right? And it'll give you a confidence to take that next step. And then if it did work, well, okay, great, it's going to give you confidence to take that next step and kind of go through with more information until you get to your first failure. Right. That's it. But it's very much a journey. You know, UCLA's folks on social media and even they look at me like, you know, I've got, you know, properties around the world and a pretty diversified portfolio and the cars and the watches and all the bullshit. Guys, it doesn't happen overnight. The people that can tell you like, oh, do this, buy my course, but it's fucking bullshit, man. No one has it all figured out. I don't. I've been doing this for a long time. We don't all have it figured out. But as long as you can remain curious, surround yourself with this. absolute best people, right? Team, coaches, advisors, attorneys, lawyers, that kind of thing. You're hard to kill. Yeah, I think for me and what I've observed in others, you know, such as yourself, it's more, the biggest thing that allows for you to be successful in, in business

and in life is consistent action, you know, and, you know, sometimes when I'm teaching to a live audience, I'll pick out a person in the room, typically like a really fit guy. And I'll, I'll pick him up. I'll say, hey, will you stand up for a second? And I'll ask the audience members, I'll say, do you think that he pays attention to what he eats? Do you think he pays attention to how he sleeps? Do you think he regularly has, do you think he has a habit of working out consistently? And clearly, the answer to that is yes, right? So you can see the outcome, right? But what you can't see is that day that he, you know, had a bad day and wanted to go and, you know, eat a bucket of brownies or a bucket of ice cream or, but did. Yeah, got up at six, got up at six

a.m. and did the reps and did the work. Yeah. That's what you can't, you see the outcome, right? But you don't, what you don't recognize is, is that's a, you know, like, and that goes back to what I say, it's like the number one thing. If I was to make a recommendation to anybody of what, you know, what creates success, there's a lot of factors in there. But ultimately, if you just do the work five days a week or do the work consistently and regularly, the outcome will be there. And when you have the setbacks, you know, or you have the perceived failure, you just understand it means nothing about you. You know, Jeremy, you're talking about like, you know, that, you know, whisper in your ear about, you know, I'm not good enough or, you know, I suck,

whether the case may be. But there's also a piece of, I remember, when I had to sell a big business once upon a time that was failing. It wasn't just that conversation in my ear or my head. It was the identity that overnight transformed. Yeah. You know, and so that may be useful, I think, for those that are in business at a high level, just consider it's like, whatever you're doing, you know, that can be your identity. That's cool, right?

yet for me um what i've learned through my experience is that being a uh being sober i'm sober i've been sober for more than 20 years being healthy mentally fit physically fit being a dad those are the ways that i identify to myself that i think are far greater than any perceived business success what are your thoughts on that no i can't i mean i can't agree more and well i think that's the other piece too that people and this again i just make those whole whole podcast, but just bashing, bashing social media, right? This whole Ty Lopez thing, it just, like, pisses me off so bad, the whole little Ponzi scheme thing. But everyone, we live in a microwave society where it's instant gratification, instant this. But like, most of the people that you're personifying,

you're kind of going after emulating, how do you know that they're really happy? So, like, that first thing is what you just said, right? You need to understand, like, define your own success, right? Like, we've got this project proven well. that we're trying to go through and build out. Luke, it's a book-end component, but the journey, it's like, it's design your own tree, design your own game, right?

Like, that's what we're playing, right? It's like, what's important to me? Like, I started, I wanted to be an entrepreneur before I even had kids. Like, that was, I told myself that story. Probably I wanted just to have success and all those things. But the thing for me was,

I, it was, you know, Wall Street was long hours. We made a lot of money, but like, it's a very kind of dantey thing. I was never going to accept the fact, that I would miss a basketball practice, a pickup drop, any of those things, because some fucking guy told me I had to show up for work. It's not going to do it.

Like, this is how I dress. I wear a alo t-shirts. Like, I do me and that freedom, like the money has helped my freedom and my priorities. I make sure I didn't come in the office until 11 o'clock today because I was hanging out my kids. It's fall break. Right. Like that to me is what is.

And that's okay. What is your success? What does it mean for you? And then, you know, define it. And then, more importantly, go. to like your network, your people, go to people who either have that or are living in the world that you want to kind of go up and then ask them questions. The other people that we, the other mistakes that we make, my mom loves me.

Like I said, I don't call my mom for business advice, man. Don't be talking to the people that you know, what your ideas is sharing, whatever, because they can't help me. And I love my mom. Maybe you call her for dad advice. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, but we've got a hotel project. We're just buying, we're buying two hotels, one since they went for $39 million,

$18 million raise. We raised it on text messages through, like, our group. And, like, my mom is like, that's just, might as well be a billion. Like, it's just, like, way outside of our world. And, like, that's okay because, like, she's where we are. And we've got this type of component. So it's not like you can't still have all these different levels, but so many people I see get disenfranchised.

And it reinforces the fear of this failure component. Like, hey, I want to go and start my insert this, whatever it is. And they talk to the friends. who like are working at a factory or don't you're fucking unemployed oh that'll never work like dude why are you listening to someone that you don't want to be like that's the it just makes no sense but that's what most people do yeah you know as you're talking jeremy it's a little bit of a shift in the conversation because i'm i'm having this internal dialogue where i'm listening to what you're sharing and i'm considering my own experience and i'm thinking back to because we go back

to that you know what you learn from you know losing you know two you know two you know two million in four days. Well, you were, what, 19 years old and I have? How were you? 19, yeah. 19, right? So at 19, you're invincible. Maybe if you would have not lost it at 19 at 25, you probably still would have been invincible, right?

But I remember going back to that time of my life, when I'd be, you and I were probably around the same age, right? So, you know, listening to people that have been doing this for 25 plus years, right? but the challenge was, was my ego was like, yeah, that's them, but I'm going to be, like, I'm not saying I'm smarter than them, but I, you know, I can figure this out and I'll be good. But the reality of it is, is that I did not, at least for me, I didn't have that experience, right? Like, I had the same experience as the 50-year-old guys, 25 years old, 25 years ago, we're telling me. And now I'm the 50s, you know, some-year-old guy, you know, searing this with others.

It's like, how do we reconcile that so that people can learn quicker, you know, that are in their earlier stages? What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, and that's so just, it's a great, great question and comment. So, like, that's why I say, when I say one of the top two or three best things that ever happened to me in my life, wasn't the $2 million. It was the timing of the $2 million because you're exactly right. Failure is inevitable. If you have not gotten punch on the fucking face yet, brace for it because the left hook's coming, buddy. Right.

It happens to everyone. It's ubiquitous in nature and it's going to happen. So why I think I was so lucky is that, and I know lucky it was $2 million because I was 19. It would have been $22 million at $25 and maybe a kid or what. So like it would have just been bigger, right? But I learned the last, it took the message and went like it was me. And another piece of advice maybe for the younger audience that's listening, guy told me when I was, you know, early on Wall Street kind of going.

through. And I was so offended until like we actually sat down and had a conversation. He said, Delk, you do not deserve to have a dollar in the bank until you're 30 years old. I'm like, wow. And that didn't mean, Delk, you don't have the ability to have any money to make money to go through. Basically, he said you should be putting it all on fucking black until you're fucking 30. Because like that point, that's the time, man, you're all babies. Yeah, because you don't have a family. You don't have kids. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Go. Break it up. Go crazy. Go crazy. Because then what that's going to do for you is expose you to so many, you know, successes and failures. It's going to give you some scars, some scar tishia, some battle wounds that you can kind of go through and like, all right, now let's go.

Now I don't need to put the entire family's future on the deal for two hotels, right? That's okay. It's another little side project, right? I don't have to go through and do it. But that early days, it was, you know, make a buck, turn it to four, lose two, go and just rinse and rinse and repeat that kind of go through it and that's you know different stages in life proven well you mentioned that earlier yeah well so the the idea is you know we so i've done in a lot of you know you know talking about failure right so many people like i've had two ink 500 companies blah blah

blah like that's all like your resume talking points but what you don't see in the awards is like all the shit that goes behind the scenes are like can i make payroll can we go through can we thought of this lawsuit, all those pieces. And, you know, most people, and being an entrepreneur, right, or a solopreneur, it's a very lonely place. And if we know that it's in this world of fear, we fucking don't want to always talk and share, whatever. So we wanted to build a community and an environment where everyone signs non-disclosures, everyone's like this. You can't kind of screw, steal from everybody, but we don't talk theory. It's like, this is what I did. This is my problem. and what we wanted to do is build a very small community that the problem, the answer or the

solution to your problem is in that room, right? Could be financing, could be a deal flow, could be an attorney, could be an estate plan, whatever it is. So that's that. And then, you know, we built this kind of book-in framework from, you know, birth, right, which is really birth of an entrepreneur. Like, when you started and you've kind of gone through, that's what we consider, like, that birth, that's first starting point. To the very end is, you know, just, you know, just generational wealth. That's my thing, right? Or whatever is that you want to kind of book in. All those things in between there is like the playing your own adventure kind of thing. Like, hey, I don't want to work. I want some people take sabbaticals every three or four years and

with their families. Like whatever, homeschooling your kids. Whatever your thing is, there is, and wherever you are on the journey, you know, it's all the same for everyone else. There may be more dollars, right? There may be more complex structures. There may be a more, you know, strategic tax mitigation program like all those pieces but it's it's just smaller or bigger or smaller numbers like i'm i've got my 11 and a half year old he just listed his first flip he's got two flips he's doing two 300 thousand dollars houses like obviously he had a couple thousand dollars saved up dad is you know the hard money lender on here and we got a 50 50 bit i don't he's how many points you charge in your kid not to say well dude don't worry he's got a good deal

I gave him $70,000, and it's a 50-50 split. So I think he's just, okay. His one grand is going to turn into 10. But, like, it's not even about the money. It's like, this is a first-hand application of, like, creating value because that's what it is, right? If it's a $300,000 house that we paid $200,000 for put $50 in, we've created value. Okay, buying, you know, $40 million worth hotels, we're going to make it worth $50, and then that's created value. So it's just decimal points and where you're sliding them.

So we wanted to be able to kind of give them. those components, no matter where you were in your journey. If you need help, just making more of the first thing, if you're in early in the entrepreneur stage and you want to help scale the business, sell the business, like we've got guys, I've done that a lot, we can do there. If it's now like, okay, I'm making all this money, but I'm paying millions in taxes. That's stupid. Don't do that.

We can show you how to, like, legally, you know, invest in the strategies that can help minimize that tax liability. Okay, now I've got my tax to save. I got this pot of money. How do I protect it from not getting sued? it's all those things well that's a trusted in estate plane like all of those different layers again that are customized because they're unique

but it's all the same mechanics does that make sense right I love it I love it you could somebody learn more about that if they're listening right now and they're like hey that sounds cool um delkennerprises.com is the best and then you can message me and my team will reach out I'm Jeremy S. Delke on all socials

so ready for lightning round let's go what was your first business first business was the window network. Well, Delc Enterprises was like the whole company. So I was like, I started Delc Enterprise in 2001. We were doing, you know, now, no, Jeremy, you had a business before then. You were selling bubble gum in high and in middle school or elementary. What was your first business? Okay, fair. My first

business was rainbow vacuum cleaners at 16. Have you heard of these? Rainbow? I think so, yeah. Yeah. So these rainbow vacuum cleaners, I could still give to the spitch. Like, you know, guys, when you're walking down, I'll mess up your lightning round, but basically we were selling $2,000, $2,500 vacuum cleaners in the early 90s in small townsville, Kentucky. And I was selling them, right? Because we were going through, and that's where I learned a mode of sales.

Like, you know, people, I've seen people, you know, clear their throat and spit on the ground, then people walk into it in the carpet. Now your kids are playing on that carpet. Oh, my God, could you imagine? Like, just getting that emotion component, like just kind of surface level, get in the vacuum this actually comes up it's got water and vacuums it filled like all just

selling features benefits so you're not selling on price it's like hey it's a solution right that that was uh that was it rainbow vacuum cleaners for your favorite book your favorite book um favorite book um die with zero a buddy in mind bill perkins wrote that uh phenomenal um it's yeah phenomenal book. Favorite podcast. Podcast. Dan Roshan. No broke minds. No, I love Rogan, man. I listen to Rogan all the time. I love Rogan.

Favorite movie. Favorite movie, Godfather. One, two, or three? One. When I say the word, I'm going to say a word, what's the first word that comes back to you? Failure. Learning. Success.

scoreboard love it Jeremy thank you so much for joining us here you've already shared with us how we can get in touch with you but shut that out one more time

just in case of somebody missed it please yeah delkeenterprises.com's the website and then Jeremy S. Delk on all socials S is insane love you my man hey thank you for listening to Daily you are awesome I'm going to wish everybody

have the best day of your life be grateful make good choices and go help somebody God bless you This is Dan Rochon, host of No Broke Months. Do you want consistent and predictable income with no broke months? My new book, Teach to Sell, why top performers never sell,

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