Daniel Berk was 32 years old, about 50 pounds overweight, and hadn't sprinted since college when he posted a tweet saying he was going to become a runner. He didn't know what he was doing. His first 5K took 50 minutes. He described himself as a blubbery, slow, out-of-breath whale. And then he just kept going.

Two and a half years later he's lost 50 pounds, run four half marathons, and is sixteen weeks out from his first full marathon at Chicago. He's also an entrepreneur, a content creator, a father of two with a third on the way, and someone who thinks about running and business in almost exactly the same terms.

This conversation is about what happens when you show up publicly with a goal you're not sure you can achieve — and what that does for you in every other part of life.

Topics covered:

• What pushed Daniel over the edge to start running — a family heart scare and a TikTok

• His first 50-minute 5K and why he kept going anyway

• When the runner's high finally hit and why he describes it like a drug

• Breaking the 30-minute 5K and what that meant to him

• How the mental game of running mirrors the mental game of entrepreneurship

• Why he used to downplay his progress and how Jon pushed back on that

• The Gap and the Gain — looking back at how far you've come versus the gap to where you want to be

• Being publicly curious and what that's done for his career and his running

• Chicago marathon prep — training block, fueling experiments, shoe rotation

• What he's thinking about at the start line with his pregnant wife and two kids waiting at mile markers

• Chunking as a framework for getting through long runs and hard things

• What's going through his head the moment he crosses the finish line

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