How Smart Entrepreneurs See Global Opportunities Before Everyone Else

How Smart Entrepreneurs See Global Opportunities Before Everyone Else

Most people don’t fail because they lack opportunity.

         

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Most people don’t fail because they lack opportunity. They stall because they stay where they’ve already succeeded. 👉 Follow the show so you don’t miss conversations like this.

Daniel Daly spent more than two decades building and scaling businesses in the automotive industry before making a major shift into global investing across real estate, infrastructure, hospitality, and emerging markets. In this conversation, he explains how customer experience became the foundation for everything he built — and how observational thinking helped him identify long-term opportunities developing underneath major global trends.

What You’ll Learn

  • Why customer experience remains one of the most powerful growth tools in business
  • How Daniel uses “observational investing” to identify opportunities early
  • How electric vehicles, semiconductors, copper, and nuclear energy are all connected
  • Why many entrepreneurs stay trapped in “comfortable success” too long
  • How to think more independently in a world full of noise and distraction

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About Daniel Daly

Daniel Daly is an entrepreneur and global investor focused on real estate, infrastructure, hospitality, tourism, and emerging market opportunities. After more than twenty years building and scaling businesses in the automotive industry, he transitioned into international investing by studying long-term infrastructure patterns, supply chains, energy demand, tourism growth, and global market shifts. His investment philosophy centers around observation, customer experience, and identifying opportunities before they become obvious to the broader market.

Transcript

INTRO
TONY: Welcome back to the podcast. Now, most people don't fail because they lack opportunity. They stall because they stay where they've already succeeded. And in a changing market, that can become a real risk, because what you built your success on in one environment doesn't always hold up in the next.
TONY: Today's conversation is about recognizing that moment and making the shift before you're forced to. Daniel Daly has spent over two decades building in one industry, with a strong focus on customer experience and growth. But instead of staying where things were predictable, he made a move that most people hesitate to make. He stepped into something new — not gradually, but boldly — into building real estate globally, crypto, and lifestyle assets. It's remarkable what he did in just a few years. He built a much diversified portfolio that spans multiple markets and borders. It's astounding.
TONY: So the real question becomes: how do you know when it's time to expand beyond what's familiar — not just for growth, but for resilience? And how do you do it without putting everything you've built at risk? In this conversation, we're going to talk about customer experience as a growth engine, and what it really means to start late — probably a word no one likes to hear, but we're forced to hear it. How do you think globally in uncertain times? And what's the mindset required to move into new arenas with clarity and control?
TONY: If you've ever felt like you've outgrown your current lane, or you're starting to question whether your current model is enough for what's coming next, this is worth listening to. Let's dive in. Hi, Daniel — welcome to the Tony DUrso Show.

DANIEL DALY: Thanks for having me, Tony. Great to be here.

TONY: Daniel, I am very, very pleased to have you. What you've built and done is remarkable. I want to talk about borderless wealth — it's a very interesting concept. Wealth without borders. We think we know what it means, but maybe we don't. Let's go back for a moment. How did you get into this industry and how did your mindset navigate and evolve around this? Because you were primarily very strong in customer experience.



INTERVIEW – PART 1: ORIGINS — FROM AUTOMOTIVE TO GLOBAL INVESTING

DANIEL DALY: I'll go back quite a ways and unpack it a little bit to tell you how I got here without taking up too much time. If we go back to when I started my adult life — coming out of high school, going into that college-age period — I happened to be one of those people who just didn't really know exactly what they wanted to do. It wasn't crystal clear to me. And that can be a scary point in time, right? Everybody's asking, "Where are you going? What are you going to do with the rest of your life?" That's a really big question.
DANIEL DALY: Shortly thereafter, I wound up getting into the automotive industry. A friend of a friend introduced me to somebody who said, "Listen, we're looking for some people that are passionate about the product." It was BMW at the time, which I've always been a big fan of — and he said I'd be amazing at it. I said, "I am not a car salesman." It turns out, twenty-something years later, I was a really good one.
DANIEL DALY: I learned early on that I was my brand, and that customer service was going to be the differentiating factor that made me really, really well at what I was doing. I realized that by selling the same product that every other BMW store had — everybody's got the same silver five series — the customers are coming in, so what's the difference between our product and somebody else's? It was how you took care of the customer. The experience you gave them. Did they leave feeling educated about the product? Eventually they'll buy from you, because people buy from people they like.
DANIEL DALY: So I spent two decades in that career, really perfecting the idea that customer experience is my brand — through sales, finance, management, upper management. Most recently I was the vice president of an automotive startup group here in Southern California that I scaled from one dealership and five or so employees to over five hundred employees and seven hundred million dollars in revenue in five years. I scaled it really fast, built something really big, and understood along the way that if any of our stores were going to be better than the competitors, it was going to rely on customer experience. That's always been my go-to tool in the toolbox.
DANIEL DALY: Customer service is really, really difficult to master, because it's easy to say, "These customers are never happy." But if you can figure out that secret sauce of connecting with those kinds of people, you'll earn their business forever. I mirrored that with real estate and global investing over the past four years since 2022. I saw some things that had very common elements, figured out how to combine them, and that's what brings me here today.

TONY: I am astounded — and it's not quite a deer-in-headlights moment, but the growth is just off the scale, off the charts, and all the words you can imagine. Just incredible growth. We've seen dealerships here and there, some struggling, but what you've built is beyond critical mass, beyond a great infrastructure. And as I'm thinking about this, I'm going — this is all based on how you deal with people. There's more power in this than we can imagine. And it begs the question, Daniel: what did you see early on that most businesses still miss today?

INTERVIEW – PART 2: CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE AS THE ULTIMATE GROWTH ENGINE
DANIEL DALY: That it's free. And what I mean by that is — let me give you a real-world example. You and I hop in an elevator together and I don't know you. I get on the fifth floor, you get on the fourth floor, and we're going down. I go, "That's an amazing shirt. I like that shirt — that color looks great on you." I just made your entire day. It's free.
DANIEL DALY: So making those real connections with strangers is such a powerful tool for a business. We've all seen it — we might go to our favorite restaurant with our partner, looking forward to a Friday dinner. It was a month to get a reservation. And at the end of dinner, dessert comes out and the chef brings it out himself. He says, "Listen, I heard it's the first time you've been here. We hope you come back and see us many, many times. I just wanted to come out and introduce myself." You're going back.
DANIEL DALY: And if you have the same restaurant with the same menu, the same food, the same location — and the waiter or waitress isn't on point, your food comes out not exactly the way you expected, you're a little disappointed — you're not going back. Customer service is all the glue that holds these retail-type, customer-facing businesses together. It's all based on: can you make a real connection with strangers in a meaningful way that creates a memory for them? A memory they're going to carry and share.
DANIEL DALY: "I bought this car from this guy Dan ten years ago and I still have it — and I've got to tell you, this guy was amazing, and here's why." Or, "My wife and I went to this restaurant and the chef came out, and it was amazing." You'll tell that story to a hundred people. That is free advertising, free marketing. You become a brand ambassador for the business because of the person in that business who made the connection with you. It is the most powerful profit lever there is in any type of customer-facing business.
TONY: Wow. You reminded me of a story I've never told — so this is the time to tell it. Most people in the world have heard the name Wolfgang Puck. He used to have a very popular restaurant in Los Angeles called Spago. The first time I was there, he came out himself and gave us a chef's special — I didn't order it, didn't ask for it. He just brought it himself. Then he opened another restaurant. I went there as well. And all of a sudden — here's some soup he made just for you. He would come out, I didn't order it, but he would deliver it. And as simple as that is, as you're talking to me, I'm thinking of these experiences. Yeah. Absolutely amazing. It's how you treat that person.
DANIEL DALY: I don't want to put you on the spot, but what year was that? Give me a range.
TONY: It was in the late eighties — 1986.
DANIEL DALY: Alright. So here we are a couple of decades later, and you still remember that story as if you were there right now. So it's a powerful, powerful tool. And the secret is: it's really simple. The curse of it is: it's very difficult.
DANIEL DALY: Wolfgang — I'm sure in the back of the kitchen it's on fire back there. Literally. People are yelling, people are screaming, there's fifty people back there going a hundred miles an hour. "I don't have the time to go out and give this guy who I don't even know some free soup. We're too busy." He made the time to do it because he understands the power of it. So that's the difficult part — to be able to, in a busy environment, still take the time to make that real connection with strangers that will build your business for decades.
TONY: So true. And we're speaking here with Daniel Daly. We're talking about borderless wealth. You can find him at globalipllc.com. Did I get that right, Daniel?
DANIEL DALY: You did. Yes, thank you.
TONY: What Dan is really talking about here is something a lot of entrepreneurs eventually discover. The product matters. The service matters. But the experience people have with you matters just as much. Two companies can sell nearly the exact same thing, and one completely outgrows the other because of how people feel when they interact with the brand. That's trust. That's connection. And over time, that becomes real leverage.

SPONSOR BREAK – SHOPIFY
TONY: Every successful business starts with a moment — usually a very uncertain moment. An idea, a side project, a conversation, a "what if." And honestly, starting something new can feel intimidating. When I started podcasting, I didn't know exactly where it would lead. You wonder — will anybody listen? Will this work? Am I making the right decision? And most entrepreneurs go through that same internal conversation.
And that's why I like what Shopify represents, because Shopify helps remove a lot of the friction that stops people from getting started in the first place. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world, and ten percent of e-commerce in the United States — from global brands to entrepreneurs just starting out. What I like is that they've built the platform to scale with you. Maybe today you're launching one product, maybe you're testing an idea, maybe you've already built something and you're trying to grow it globally. Shopify gives you the tools to do that without needing fifteen disconnected systems all over the place.
TONY: You can build a beautiful online store with ready-to-use templates that actually match your brand and your personality. It's time to turn those what-ifs into what's-next with Shopify today. Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial today at shopify.com/tony.

INTERVIEW – PART 3: LEAVING YOUR LANE — TRUSTING YOUR INSTINCTS
TONY: And now back to Dan, who was talking about how customer experience became the foundation for everything he built — first in automotive and later in global investing and hospitality. Let's go back to your incredible growth, which I'm still astounded by. In my intro I talked about how we all know this feeling. You're in your lane. You're comfortable. You're good in your area, your expertise — but you left it. At some point you realized that it wasn't risky to go, but it was strong to go. That's a confusing thing, because we're taught kind of the opposite. I think you know where I'm going with this. How do you make that move into something new, somewhere you're not the expert?
DANIEL DALY: It's very, very difficult. Let me back up a little bit. Here's what I've learned throughout the process: it's very important to trust your instincts. Fear will keep you trapped in that box. The box likes having you in it, right? You're part of the system. It works. You're a cog in the wheel. You have a nine-to-five. You've got great benefits, whatever it is. But are you happy? Are you satisfied? Do you feel like you have a purpose?
DANIEL DALY: I've had two different positions over the last ten years, but before that I had ten positions in ten years — because I was always looking to move up in my career. I always raised my hand for the next opportunity when I got too comfortable. It's just part of my personality. And for people like me, it's really important to pay attention to that instinctual voice that's kind of itching at you, saying, "We've accomplished what we came here for. What's next?"
DANIEL DALY: I was trapped in that box myself for years. I was comfortable. I was making a very good living. But it did get to a point where I said: it will be much less productive to stay where I am than it would be to risk something that I believe will work. And that risk-reward calculation is different for everybody. Everybody's in a different financial position, a different climate, a different area. There are all these different variables — kids, the winter's coming, it's not a good time to change things now, I'll wait till spring. For most people, spring never comes.
DANIEL DALY: So you have to be smart about it. Plan in advance. Do as much research as you can so that you can set yourself up for success when you do walk away and do something new. I don't recommend just saying, "I'm frustrated today and I'm quitting my job and I'm going to try something I've never done before." That's probably not going to be very successful.
DANIEL DALY: The way I was able to mirror it was through customer service. It's foundational to so many different businesses. Throughout my career, I was always asking my most successful customers — what is it that you do? What's made you so successful? Ninety-five percent of them said real estate, real estate, real estate. And I always had the mindset that I wished I had more money to get into the real estate game. So I talked myself out of it — which a lot of us are guilty of doing.
DANIEL DALY: My first real estate deal was thirty years ago. I bought the cheapest house in the best neighborhood in the New Jersey suburbs, right outside of New York City. I saved up every dollar I had. I borrowed money from my parents. I still have that house today — it's been a long-term rental for me. And I understood, once I was ready to take the next step, how to use that house for leverage — tax-free leverage — to buy more properties. And then create a great customer experience that makes people want to stay at our short-term rentals more often and become brand ambassadors for what we're doing and tell others about it. So it was really the automotive playbook — I just put it on top of real estate. And it works seamlessly, because it is customer service.
TONY: While you're saying this, I'm thinking about timing. I'm thinking — you started investing in a different space after about three years. How did you know the timing was right? The world wasn't as seemingly volatile as it is now, but how does anybody know when it's a good time to pivot?
INTERVIEW – PART 4: TIMING THE MARKET — IT'S ALMOST ALWAYS THE RIGHT TIME
DANIEL DALY: Unless you're a day trader really trading whatever the commodity is based on daily news cycles, it is almost always the right time. If you bought a house in 2008, you did okay with it. If you bought a house in 2018, you did okay with it. Did anybody know what was coming? Could they have timed it? No. Did a lot of people get hurt in 2007? Yes. But if you were able to stay in the game a little bit longer and ride it out, you came out very, very well on the other side.
DANIEL DALY: Nobody can time the markets. Everybody has a crystal ball and they all have a large margin of error. I can't tell you how many times in my career people said, "You know, I'm always thinking about that house in 1982 that I should have bought... that house in 1992... the house in 2002." Everybody's got the story about the past. Why? Because if they got in the game, they would have done all right by now. So there was zero fear for me about whether it was the right time or the wrong time, because I was committed to building a business around what I was doing and being in it for the longer term. There are always going to be ebbs and flows. If you can be smart about it and ride it out, you can create a business that people value — and you will do well.
TONY: I think part of it is being able to evaluate that — should I go? And also recognizing the opportunity when you see it. For example, I was VP of sales and marketing of a company I helped form. I did well for seven years. Then I had the opportunity to take on my own company, which went well. And then — you're not even going to believe it — after another seven years, I had the opportunity to podcast.
DANIEL DALY: You're laughing because it makes you happy now, right?
TONY: So true. When you find your calling — what aligns with your purpose — you don't need the money for it. I have plants, I have flowers. I feed them, I water them, I give them sun. They don't give anything back to me, but that joy — it sounds really silly, but it's that pleasure you get from something. And I could run a business just taking care of flowers or plants, though I'm not an expert, so I don't know it would be a great business. But the love, the passion is there. And that's what I'm talking about. So at some point you had this passion, and I'm curious — you were still doing gangbusters in automotive — was the move into investing because of that passion?
DANIEL DALY: Yes. For ten years before that, real estate was just itching me. I just didn't know anything about it, so I talked myself out of it for a while. I always said I don't have enough money to get into it. And then one day I just said: I'm losing my sense of purpose doing what I'm doing now. I need to find what I want to do next — something where I'm up at night with my wheels turning about how to make something grow tomorrow. Waking up early thinking about how I can conquer today. It's watering the plants, right? The same exact thing you're talking about, but different for all of us.
DANIEL DALY: So I went through this really early exercise that was extremely valuable for me. It's called the Seven Layers of Why. You say to somebody: why do you want to make so much money every year? "Well, I want a big house." Why do you want a big house? "Well, I want to give my family something." What is it you're looking to give them? "I want them to be safe and be happy." You go through all these layers of why. When you get to number seven, number seven will tell you your purpose. Mine was: I want to connect with other people to give them great experiences. That was the bottom line of my why. And now if I use that to build off of almost whatever I do at the top, it's going to be very successful, because I'm reverse-engineering from purpose.
DANIEL DALY: A lot of it is soul searching. What is it I want to do? What gets me up in the morning? Life is short. And I'd just ask out loud: would you take more money to go do something that you weren't as happy with — where you didn't have time to water the plants and you didn't have time to meet and greet people on podcasts and connect with your audience? Probably not, right? Because now you've found something and it's not about the money. Money's important — we all need to make a certain amount. But at some point it's about fulfilling your purpose, and that's a very individualistic thing that everybody needs to figure out for themselves. For me, I said: I would love to take this successful playbook that I've been running for twenty years and put it into real estate. And that took me down the rabbit hole.
TONY: One thing I really appreciate about Dan's story is that he didn't make the leap emotionally. He studied. He observed. He thought long term. And that's important, because we're living in a world where people are constantly pressured to react instantly. But thoughtful decisions usually create better outcomes than emotional ones.

INTERVIEW – PART 5: THE OBSERVATIONAL INVESTOR — SPOTTING TRENDS BENEATH THE TRENDS
TONY: And now back to Dan, who was talking about how he transitioned from decades in automotive into global real estate investing, and why purpose often matters more than comfort. I've run into people here and there that love their job, love what they're doing, would never want to be an entrepreneur or a business person — wouldn't even want a promotion. I've met people so happy at their job they didn't want to move. They found their why. But you went from multiple items — from automotive to real estate to crypto to different lifestyle assets. What's the why that kept you expanding?
DANIEL DALY: I'm interested in things that I can kind of see ahead of the road. What I mean is — years ago, I was in New York City and Apple opened up the new Apple Store. It was three stories high, this amazing glass box right across from Central Park. The day it opened, there were two thousand people in line. I said, "That's interesting. I might want to buy some stock in that company." I still own it today — Apple stock. That was around 2007, maybe when they opened their first big store. So that's kind of where I start. I call myself an observational investor. I like to read the news. I'm always looking for interesting things to learn about.
DANIEL DALY: Fast forward a little bit. Five years ago or so we were installing high-speed chargers in the dealerships for EVs, so customers could charge their cars. It cost us about one hundred and eighty thousand dollars to install one charger, and it took about nine months. The local city didn't have enough power going to the building. We had to pay to upgrade the transformer. They didn't have the correct power going to the lines that fed the transformer. On and on and on. Basic engineering stuff — and that was for one charger. They want the whole country to drive electric cars and plug in. But the state of Texas — if it gets above one hundred degrees, the whole grid goes down because everybody has their air conditioning on. How are they ever going to power all of those electric cars they want us to drive? There's simply not enough power.
DANIEL DALY: So that's what led me to nuclear energy and SMRs — small modular reactors. If you do a little research, Microsoft has their own nuclear power company. Amazon has their own nuclear power company. OpenAI has their own nuclear power company. They understand that it's about having the power to control the data centers and not rely on the traditional grid. So I invested in nuclear. What do you need to power nuclear? You need uranium. So I invested in the uranium mining companies.
DANIEL DALY: Another quick one. During COVID, we couldn't get semiconductors made for the vehicles. So production was halted. We couldn't get cars from the factories, we couldn't sell cars. We weren't making money. I never realized in twenty years in automotive how many different semiconductors there are in a car. It turns out there are a great many. So I bought Nvidia, Intel, AMD, and Taiwan Semiconductor Company. And then the main component they all need to make their semiconductors is copper. Going down the rabbit hole — the seven layers of why — why do you want to buy a semiconductor company? Why do we need copper? That's the grassroots level. How I break everything down for investing is: what's going on in the world, what do I think is going to be the next big thing, and how can I invest at the resource level that these companies all need? And then who are the leaders in that sector?
TONY: It seems like you have this passion for investing not just in the product that's offered to the public, but in the supply chain — what supplies them, and what supplies them. Plus, you're also able to see where things are going. If you read the paper and read the news, you get this general idea of what's happening. And like a ship in the water, you can get close to a destination, and as you get closer, you see where you have to navigate.
DANIEL DALY: That's a great point. Take semiconductors as an example since we're talking about it. I started researching Intel, AMD, Nvidia, and Taiwan Semiconductor Company, and they're all pretty big. I didn't know which one to invest in at first. But I did a little research and found that they all need the same common component to make their product. So do I want to invest in five different companies, or do I want to invest in one natural resource that is in demand that they all need? That's the question I ask.





INTERVIEW – PART 6: CUTTING THROUGH THE NOISE — HOW TO NAVIGATE UNCERTAINTY
TONY: I'm thinking with this — very, very interesting. And along with that, when I think about today... people go through the news and they get a little too depressed to start thinking of ideas or opportunities. They start getting confused. This faction doesn't like that one, this product can be stopped or blocked, it's just a madhouse — yet there are real opportunities. But it's like, how do you know where to navigate through all this noise?
DANIEL DALY: How do I know? That's a great question. I don't know, but I give myself a best-case scenario where I feel comfortable with the risk — and I'm not actually a risk taker. I try to mitigate the risk as best I can.
DANIEL DALY: Let me give you the bigger picture first. You know, everybody's grandfather used to say how the world is changing and these kids today aren't the same. And then my dad would say the world is changing, these kids today. And then my uncles and older cousins — this world is terrible. Everybody thinks it's terrible. But think about what we have in the power of the palm of our hand versus what John D. Rockefeller had one hundred years ago. We are a much, much more fast-learning, educated society with opportunities that never existed before. So that's the first, thirty-thousand-foot view.
DANIEL DALY: Now, the second part is really tricky. The news wants us to keep swiping and looking at the latest stuff. I avoid it. I don't read any of it. There's an amazing app called Feedly — I don't endorse them, I'm not paid by them, they're not a sponsor. Basically you put in what you're looking to learn about, what the news sources are, what the news topics are — and it filters everything except for what you want. So I don't see any of the nonsense. Any day I pick up my phone, the only news app I use is Feedly. I'm not distracted by all the fake news or real news or all the stuff that isn't pertinent to me. I just focus on what's important to me. There's no negativity — the minute I open my phone, it's all positive. The only thing I see is, "Oh, I want to learn about this. I want to learn more about that." It's crypto, it's emerging markets, it's energy, it's hospitality and tourism, it's real estate in Europe. It's my own private news channel that anybody can start. But you have to be the one to pick what you want to see — what's going to be in front of you.
TONY: So true. You can cut right through and see the opportunity, whereas the rest of us are a little beleaguered by all the stuff coming through. There's still risk on it though. For the audience trying to aspire to what you've built — there's a lot of navigation still to do. There's a lot of risk. Please help me figure this out.
DANIEL DALY: Just going back again to how advanced this society is based on what was available one hundred years ago — if you wanted to learn about nuclear reactors right now from your laptop or your phone, you could put it in Google or ChatGPT and pull up any relevant news sources and have enough reading material for the last two months. You could never do that before. You needed a team of people to find that information for you. So the ability to access real knowledge has never been quicker. It's up to us to figure out how we're going to use our time to research whatever it is we might be interested in.
DANIEL DALY: Learn as much about it as you can. Learn about the pros and the cons of nuclear energy. What are the cons? It may not take off the way I think it will. It may take longer than I think it will. Versus: how are we ever going to power these data centers and electric vehicles with just electricity when we know the local grids can't support it? It can never happen on the electric grid — it's just not capable of it. There needs to be an alternative, and nuclear is the only real alternative. And to get into it — it is the absolute cleanest source of energy there is, and the most reliable and the most powerful. The US Navy has been running submarines on nuclear reactors for thirty years without an accident or a lost life. Nuclear got a bad rap in the seventies from the big oil companies — it was painted in a way that got people off of it really, really quickly. There have been some accidents, but if you look at them all, Fukushima happened during a tsunami and an earthquake at the same time. What are the odds of that ever happening again? Nobody could predict it because it had never happened before. Those are the kinds of risk-reward things I look at.
DANIEL DALY: So it's up to us as individuals to figure out what it is that we think might be the next great thing, and then do as much research as we can — and it's so instantly available, it does not take a long time. Then you start thinking about it. Is there something here? And then you put it to rest. If it comes back two or three days or two or three weeks later, you know you're on to something. We all have great ideas when we're sitting on the couch. It's the ones that keep coming back that we say, "You know what — I deserve to give myself enough time to look into this a little bit more."
DANIEL DALY: Here's what I would say is the dangerous part about that: we tend to want to ask other people what they think. And I am not a fan of doing that. If you're that real entrepreneurial-spirit type person — you want to be a one-percenter — being a one-percenter means to me that ninety-nine percent of the other people do not understand the way you think. Why would you ever want to run your idea by someone who's going to say, "Why would you ever want to do that? You have a great job. That's the craziest idea I've ever heard." Very rarely are you going to hear, "That's an amazing idea. If you think it has opportunity, you should do everything you can to take it as far as you can." You're almost never going to hear that from someone.
TONY: What Dan just said is something most people eventually discover for themselves. If you're trying to build something different, most people around you probably won't understand it at first — not because they're bad people, but because people naturally measure possibility based on their own experience. And that can quietly limit what we believe we're capable of doing.
TONY: One thing I've noticed after interviewing so many successful people over the years is this: very few of them followed a perfectly predictable path. Most of them started somewhere completely unrelated to where they eventually ended up. Some began in jobs they outgrew. Some failed repeatedly before things worked. Some started later in life. Some reinvented themselves entirely. But there's usually one thing they all have in common — at some point, they stopped waiting for certainty. Not recklessly, not blindly. But they reached a moment where staying the same became more uncomfortable than growing into something new.
TONY: Dan talked about thinking globally, about paying attention to infrastructure, about studying trends underneath the trends. That's a very different mindset than simply reacting to headlines. Whether somebody wants to invest globally, build a business, launch a podcast, write a book, start a company, create music, or simply make a meaningful life change — the principle is still the same. Growth usually begins the moment we become willing to learn again. Not when we know everything, not when conditions are perfect, not when everybody agrees with us — but when we stay curious enough to keep moving forward. And that may be one of the most valuable skills any entrepreneur can develop today.
TONY D'URSO NEWSLETTER
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INTERVIEW – PART 7: IT'S NEVER TOO LATE — AGE, PURPOSE, AND THE POWER OF STARTING
TONY: And now back to Dan, who was talking about risk, opportunity, and why many people talk themselves out of great ideas long before they ever give themselves the chance to succeed. You're going to hear a lot from people — it's too late, it's too far gone. They'll say that with real estate, they'll say that with so many opportunities. You just have to look at where those people are in their lives. Who am I taking advice from, and what baggage do they bring to the conversation?
DANIEL DALY: Wherever you are, at any age, there's always a great opportunity if you just look at it as an opportunity. I started at fifty years old, Tony. My first house, I bought when I was in my twenties — thirty years ago. But I didn't do anything with real estate for twenty-eight of those years. It is never too late.
TONY: One thing that's motivated me — it's almost a silly story, but it's not really silly. It's real. The one thing that's motivated me, Daniel, is Kentucky Fried Chicken. I know it sounds silly. When I was a teenager I read about Colonel Sanders. I think he was sixty-seven years old when he started. At a time when people at that age were supposedly winding down — on walkers, getting knee surgeries — he started something that became a phenomenon. There are many success stories like that, and it inspired me. It's never too late. If you have a good idea, it's just never too late.
DANIEL DALY: He never complained about it. There's also a great podcast called Founders — David Senra takes autobiographies of founders of companies and does a one-hour podcast on each one. So many little tidbits of knowledge. Like the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken — or Walmart, which is another one. I don't think the founder started Walmart until he was in his forties. And now, decades later, every member of that family is in the top ten on the world billionaires list. It is never too late. You hear about the seventy-five-year-old painter who started because he was passionate about it, somebody found out about him, and now he's in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It happens every day.
TONY: So now with that — and we've talked about this a little bit — the takeaway you're giving the audience is that there is no better time than now. If it's something you feel good about, something you feel passionate about — age really doesn't matter. If it's a great idea, it's a great idea. I think we could all go back in time to any age and think of something we wanted to do and didn't. We still regret it. Even if it didn't work out — even if it doesn't work — you're going to learn a lot more about yourself. That's a very important self-motivating tool: I want to try it, because I'm passionate about it, because it might work.
TONY: Now, we're going to add one thing into the mix when we're making that decision. You've already mentioned — very well and on point — not necessarily getting advice from other people. I totally understand that because it's your passion, not theirs. But we can tend to get emotional and use our emotions to make our decisions. You've been very analytical about how you make yours. What habits or disciplines do you have that you feel are very strong in pursuing your success path?

INTERVIEW – PART 8: MAKING DECISIONS SLOWLY — DISCIPLINE, DATA, AND LEARNING FROM MISTAKES
DANIEL DALY: That's interesting. I'm an Aries, so I am a bit of a firecracker. I've got a lot of passion and a lot of emotion. It can be a blessing and a curse. So what I learned to do — most recently from my last endeavor with the automotive company — is to make your decisions slowly. Gather as much information as you can, educate yourself, and then sleep on it. Maybe it's about a deal, right? And if the other side is pressuring you — you feel pressured, you're going to miss this deal — you know what? Let the deal go. There's another deal. If you're not comfortable, don't do anything until you're comfortable.
DANIEL DALY: You are the master of your own domain. And a lot of that pressure is self-motivated — most of it is self-motivated. So I've gotten really good at saying, "Thank you, I appreciate the deal. I've gathered my information. I'll get back to you." And then my phone rings a day or two later — "I'm still thinking about it, I'm still interested, I'll get back to you." And then when I feel comfortable, when I've done my due diligence, when I'm ready to make a decision based on my timeline — I make a decision. I control my time. Nobody else does. That's a powerful tool to have in your toolbox, because everything slows down once you understand that you are the boss of you. That's boss mode. If I lose the deal, the deal wasn't meant to be. It's really simple.
TONY: That emotion sure gets in the way sometimes. Taking a break from it, sleeping on it the next day — are you still as passionate? Do you still feel it's the greatest, best thing you've ever run into? But now that begs the question: you do the deal, and what if things don't go as planned? What if you lose momentum? Things just get all messed up. How do you deal with that?
DANIEL DALY: That's tough because it's a bit theoretical. But how do I deal with it? Let's say I waited on a deal, I did everything I thought was in my best interest to make a good decision, and it turns out it wasn't a good deal. Okay, now I have to unpack it. Why wasn't it a good deal? What was it that I missed that I should have caught? There is no better teacher than making a mistake. There are mistakes that are barnburners, and there are mistakes that just help you become better. Eventually they all help you become better — some of them real quick, and some a little bit longer. You do the best you can. You have to gather as much information as you can. At some point you have to make a decision. If you're comfortable, that's a yes.
DANIEL DALY: I consider myself a micromanager — not of people, but of data. If you're not micromanaging every point of data in your business — assets, liabilities, expenses, personnel expenses — you don't know your business. And if something surprises you — "Oh my God, we didn't have the profit we thought we were going to have in Q1. Our personnel expenses were forty-two percent and they should have been thirty-two." Well, how did they get there? Somebody hired all of those people. There was no process in place. Most of the information is there. We try to catch all of it before the mistakes happen, but it's going to make your next deal better — guaranteed — by learning from those mistakes.
DANIEL DALY: You can get frustrated — we're all human. "Oh my God, I'm an idiot. How did I miss that?" But then: "Oh, this is how I missed it. I found it. And the good thing is, I'm not going to let it happen again." That's the money shot. Learning literally from the mistake and not making the same mistake, or similar ones, over and over again.

INTERVIEW – PART 9: PRACTICAL STEPS TO BORDERLESS WEALTH
TONY: Okay, here we are. Let's set aside age. Let's set aside other things. We want to grow — we want to grow big, we want to grow globally. Let's summarize this. What are some practical steps we can take to take us down this path?
DANIEL DALY: I found a podcast while I was going through this called Lifestyle Investing. The premise is basically: what are the things you love to do, what are you passionate about, and how could you translate that into a profitable business? For you, it would be something like, "I love plants. I wonder — maybe I'm interested in buying a nursery. I saw one in the business listing that's for sale, it's a mom and pop and they've had it for thirty years, they're retiring and don't want to do it anymore. I would love to own that business. Let me learn everything I can about it." That's right. It's the lifestyle, thirty-thousand-foot umbrella — what am I passionate about, what do I love, what fits in that that I think I can build into a business?
DANIEL DALY: For me, underneath it, I'm passionate about traveling. I love going to Europe. So my lifestyle investment — my thirty-thousand-foot vision board — was: I'd love to have half a dozen properties throughout Europe that I could travel to for free in five years, so that when I'm not staying there, we use them as Airbnbs. And that's exactly what I started doing. I started buying properties in Europe in 2022, in all the cities that I would love to live in. Started renting them out as Airbnbs. Built a network, built a process — lawyers, property managers, bookkeepers, brokers, general contractors — you name it. Over time, making all these connections so that you have the network that now supports that lifestyle investment.
DANIEL DALY: And we started with one one-bedroom apartment in Porto, Portugal, in 2022. Now I'm launching a twenty-five million dollar Portugal Golden Visa hospitality and tourism fund, taking that exact portfolio to a much, much bigger level. Since 2022, Tony, I had not been in real estate my entire life. My dad wasn't in real estate. My favorite uncle wasn't in real estate. I knew nothing about it other than "location, location, location," and that you have to provide a great experience — whether it's to your guests or your tenants. And I'm speechless — I'm Italian, I'm speechless — at what has come from that starting point. Just amazing, amazing, amazing.
TONY: I'm speechless too — and the way I see it, again, is that driving force. You really love what you're doing, and it really shows. It really stands out. Daniel, I just want to thank you so much for coming on the show and talking to us about this. Absolutely loved it.
OUTRO
DANIEL DALY: It was great being here. Thank you.
TONY: Once again, for everyone, this is Daniel Daly talking about borderless wealth. You've got to find out more about him. Go to globalipllc.com. Daniel, thank you. Good advice — I'm inspired. I'm inspired to do all sorts of things. I really, really love it.
TONY: All right, wonderful. So much advice, guys. If you like this, share this with your friends. Tell them about Daniel, tell them about how he's operated and built a global empire of borderless wealth — based on real passion, a real methodology, and the drive to see it through. Go to his site, go find out more about him, and connect with him. And guys, wherever you are seeing this or hearing this — please follow the show. It helps bring in more amazing guests for you. Let's use this and let's help you move on your journey to success.
TONY: Remember: success awaits those who persevere and remain steadfast despite the odds. So do good seeds and good deeds — and I'll see you on the next episode

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