The easiest way to get your business to where you want it to go is to find someone that’s already there and ask them for directions.
I had the pleasure of interviewing David Meltzer. David Meltzer is the Co-Founder of Sports 1 Marketing and formerly served as CEO of the renowned Leigh Steinberg Sports & Entertainment agency, which was the inspiration for the movie Jerry Maguire. Considered one of the top esports entrepreneurs and investors, David is also a three-time international best-selling author, a Top 100 Business Coach, and host of the top entrepreneur podcast, The Playbook.
David is the Executive Producer of the Bloomberg and Amazon television series 2 Minute Drill and also is the executive producer of Entrepreneur’s #1 digital business show, Elevator Pitch. David is featured in many books, movies, and TV shows such as World’s Greatest Motivators, Think and Grow Rich: The Legacy and Beyond the Secret, airing on Netflix. Additionally, he has been recognized by Variety Magazine as their Sports Humanitarian of the Year and awarded the Ellis Island Medal of Honor.
His life’s mission is to empower OVER 1 BILLION people to be happy! This simple yet powerful mission has led him on an incredible journey to provide one thing…VALUE. In all his content, and communication that’s exactly what you’ll receive. For the past 20 years, David has been providing free weekly trainings to empower others to be happy.
Thank you for joining us David. Can you tell us a story about what brought you your specific career path?
If you connected the dots backwards to my specific career path that I’m on, you’d be thoroughly confused, which makes it thoroughly frustrating for me, because so many kids want to know, how do you end up in the position that I’m in. So I’m going to help just tell the journey of keeping my options open, being very focused on the skills that I was developing, the knowledge of who and what I wanted to learn, and most importantly, having the desire that I must be what I can be. So I wanted to be rich when I was little because my mom was a single mom of six kids who worked two jobs and I wanted to buy her house and a car. And so for me, I thought I’d be a professional athlete. I have a saying: enjoy the consistent persistent pursuit of your own potential. I didn’t have very much potential of being a professional athlete, but I did get a scholarship to play football in college. And my dreams were ruined my freshman year when I got ran over by a famous football player named Christin Okoye. And I remember lying on my back and thinking to myself, my mom’s favorite line, doctor and lawyer or failure. And so I immediately decided I wanted to be a doctor. But here’s the funny thing about my journey of being a doctor. It was very short, I was premed. And I went to go visit my oldest brother who was a doctor, and he was in the hospital. And I visited him. The first thing out of my mouth was man, I hate hospitals. He looked at me, he’s like, David, what do you mean, I go, I want to be a sports physician, I’ll be on the sidelines and in locker rooms. I’m not gonna be in the hospital. And he gave me a great piece of advice about my path and career to being where I was. And it was more than interesting. And that has always stuck with me. Because as an 18 years old freshman in college with destroyed dreams of being a football player. I was not more interested than interesting. So I immediately went to law school and graduated. And now here’s a real great lesson in my journey. I got a job I went to the law school that I went to to make a lot of money because they specialized in animal to law at Tulane University. I wanted to be an oil and gas litigator, which paid a ton of money. But I always kept my options open because I just wanted to make the most money I could. So I also got offered a job in 1992, pre-chasm internet to sell legal research on the internet, which the internet 92 is nothing like it is today. But my mom told me when I asked her, she said David, you better be a real lawyer because the internet’s a fad. You’re gonna waste your whole education your entire career on this fad called the internet. Well, luckily, lesson number two in my journey, my career journey. My mom loves me more than anyone but that does not mean she gives you good advice. So find someone that sits in the situation that you want to be in, ask them for directions where to go. And I do that still today. My mom’s an exceptional mom. So any parenting advice, I go to my mom because she can give me the best direction. But as far as technology and business goes, not a great source. Nine months out of law school, I was a millionaire. Three years later, we exited for $3.4 billion dollars, went up to the Silicon Valley and I branded myself as an Internet guru and raised hundreds of million dollars. By the time I was 30, I was running Samsung’s phone division 1999. I’m so old, they didn’t even call them smartphones. I ran the convergence device division called PC ephone. They can’t hurt they converge the laptop and a phone into one. So they call them convergence devices. It was a Windows device. It wasn’t even an Apple.
Yeah, it was cool. But way too early and way too big and what they thought was way too big and way too expensive. I just say it was way too early. Because 30 years later, you’re basically buying the Apple version of the PC phone. Anyway, I then transitioned my career. I met a man named Lee Steinberg, who’s the most notable sports agent in the world. Obviously, I had a passion for sports. He offered me a CEO job to run the most notable sports agency in the world, which I took. I partnered with Warren Moon, the Hall of Fame quarterback, we spun off a marketing and media company in the last 13 years. The last four years though, being blessed with such great businesses. In the last four years, I decided to brand myself, so I write books, I speak, I coach, I have TV shows, movies, all on a mission, though, to help people empower them to be happy. So I’m on a mission to empower over a billion people to be happy. Through my free content, my books, exercises, guides, TV shows, I have a top podcast called the Playbook. All the things that I do are simply to help people make more money, help more people and have more fun.
Can you share a story about the funniest make you made? When you first started out? Can you tell us a lesson you learned from that? The funniest mistake you made when you were first starting out?
This is a funny mistake. It’s when I was interviewing. I always tell people, treat your friends like your bosses and your bosses like your friends. I used to get in my way all the time. I know whether it was in sports or in academics, I was just someone that cared so much and prepared so hard. But instead of using that preparation to give me confidence and calmness, I would get over-analytical, over-anxious. And it’s a huge lesson. I went up for my final interview for that tremendous internet job and it was in Eagan, Minnesota. I was a Southern California kid. I was so excited because I was a poor kid. I got a scholarship to college, I took out loans for law school, I had no money in my bank account. I tell my kids all the time, I went to college with $212 total dollars. And they were like, for like a week. I said no, for the entire year. That’s how much I had. And, so here I am. And I had borrowed an overcoat because coming from Southern California, I never owned an overcoat, I never went skiing. I didn’t have a warm jacket. So I borrowed one from a friend. I was waiting at the Residence Inn for their car service to pick me up for my final interview. I was so excited about the six-figure job. In fact, the comp plan was almost a quarter of a million dollars. So I built this up into my mind. This was an incredible opportunity. I leave for the car, and this gentleman starts screaming at me. Come back here come back. I’m like what, why? Because you stole my jacket. I looked at it. And I looked at the jacket. It was mine. It was the one I borrowed because it had my friend’s name on the lapel jacket. And I said no this is mine. He reaches underneath the one I was wearing and it was his. I was so nervous that I put his jacket on. Then I put my jacket on over it the one I borrowed and literally everything spiraled from there. So I am wishing for what I don’t want. Now the car crashes on the way to the interview. So now I’m in the town car that they got me and it crashes because it’s icy. Then they have to get another car to pick me up. Then I get into the elevator and talk about how the mind creates things because I use the exact opposite in my career today. I get none of this happens to me ever and because I’ve learned the mindset. I’m in the elevator, and I’m nervous. And there’s this nice gentleman in there and there are the lights from the elevator. I’m 53 years old, but he was about my age with very similar hair as mine, maybe a little less. And you know, the lights from the elevator just really shine on you. .
I looked at him and I said. Hey, don’t worry, grass doesn’t grow on a busy street. Like as the CEO of the company, it was the CEO of the company that sold for $3.4 billion. So they give you the car wash, you go through the final interviews, and I’m flying up from Louisiana from law school into Eagan, Minnesota. Of course, everything seemed to go so well to get to the CEO job and my final interview, and there he was Baldy waiting for me. What I love is that I learned to use preparation to give you confidence, not anxiety. So many people use preparation to make themselves more anxious, and to worry, they look for what’s missing. Even though they are over-prepared, they look for what’s missing what they don’t want, or what other people want for you. I tell everyone to vote for what you want in your life. Be prepared and confident that you’ll get it I promise you, you’re at the right place, the perfect time. If you do everything to prepare. Just have faith that you’ll end up somewhere better, not worse.
What are your five things I wish someone told me before I started my company and why?
- I would say the five things I know your what, your who, your how, your now, and your why. And so, knowing your what is to make sure every day you take inventory of what you want personally, experientially giving wise, what production do you want from your day and then most importantly, receiving wise and don’t be afraid of making mistakes being a hypocrite. And don’t take yourself so seriously, be radically humble within the context of taking your inventory and knowing your what.
- Two to know your who. This is probably the biggest piece of advice that I would give you is ask for help. The easiest way to get to your business to where you want it to go is find someone that’s already there and ask them for directions.
- Know your how is three, know how to be a student. Pay attention to, give intention to the coincidences you want. Study the activity plan, the activity you don’t have planned and your sleep. Study with the lens of productivity, accessibility, how are you accessible to others, how you can access what you want, and gratitude, find light love and lessons. Pain is an indicator not a stop sign in business. All it’s doing is indicating you have something to learn to put you in a better place, a better situation.
- Four know your now so do things now. 100% of the things you do now get done. The difference between successful businesses and non-successful businesses are successful businesses get things done. Use Eisenhower’s matrix of importance to decipher or evaluate or prioritize what’s most important, versus what’s urgent. If you can’t get it done now, then go ahead, place it back into your calendar to study it for the next or later that day or the next day.
- And then finally, most importantly, the only thing I’d put above asking for help and knowing your who is knowing your why, to me knowing your why is what I discussed earlier, practice ending fear. What does that mean? Identify what you’re afraid of. So much time, emotion, money and relationships are wasted with the need to worry, the need to be anxious, the need to be angry, frustrated, fearful, separate, inferior, superior, guilty, offended, right? All these needs are only going to create interference between what you already are and already have, which is health, wealth, and happiness. You have to shift your paradigm to stop in ending fear in your life, you have to identify it, stop when you find it, don’t try to resist it, go over it under it, oversell it back and sell it, go around it, lie to it manipulate it whatever. Just stop drop to center into that confidence base that I talked about. And then roll in the right trajectory with productivity, accessibility and gratitude in your life. If you know your what, your who, your how, your now and your why I promise you those five things will bring you so much money, help so many people and allow you to be so happy.
None of us were able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who are grateful towards who helped you get to where you are?
My wife. There are so many people in my life that have helped me, my mom, my coaches, my dad, my aunt’s, my uncle’s, my teachers, my bosses, but the one person that saved my life is my wife. And that’s because she understood what was important, and I never did. And so she taught me and 2008 I lost everything. Two years before that, she taught me to take stock in who I was, and what I wanted to become. She taught me to change the way that I look at things. So the things that I looked at change, she was patient enough to allow me to learn the balance of currencies, I was always a one currency person. And that means money, currents, currencies, an object of energy that you put into the flow occurred to get what you want. My wife taught me a more important currency that is blended and reconciled with money, which is called faith. My wife gave me faith, to do the right things to be kind, to trust the universe, not myself, to surrender, to know my what my who am I, how am I now and my why. And I will forever be grateful for the best mentor and the best decision in my life, which is to marry my wife.
You’re a person of great influence, if you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people? What would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger?
It’s happiness. I’m on a mission to empower over a billion people to be happy, created collective consciousness of the greatest disease ever created the disease that strengthens you, mentally, spiritually, physically, financially, even strengthens your immune system, the most underrated virus of all time, happiness, if we can create a collective consciousness of happiness to create abundance in the world, a world of more than enough of everything for everyone, where people are kind that they trust in doing good deeds, paying it forward, and being happy, I promise you, this world would change in such a quick, rapid and accurate way. So my movement is already happiness. And I’ve dedicated my entire life to finding 1000 people like Alex, that I know empower another 1000 people in their life to empower another 1000 1000 times 1000s of million million times a 1000s of billion a billion people will create a collective consciousness and we could change the world.
What tips would you recommend to your colleagues in your industry to help them to thrive and not burn out?
Vacation every day. So I always say two minutes a day is worth more than two hours on a Saturday. It frustrates me immensely when I see even key executives, I gotta go on six weeks of vacation, I got to get off the grid. What have you been doing to yourself that you need six weeks? That’s just crazy. I’m seven days a week, I don’t believe in work. I believe in activity, I get paid for activity I don’t get paid for. I believe that in the context of vacationing every day, you will never love what you do until you learn to love what you do. So practice learning to love what you do, and you will love what you do.
How can our readers follow you on social media? What’s the best way to connect with you and follow you and learn more about how amazing you are?
So I do free trainings on Friday, but in over 20 years, they’re replayed on my top podcast called the Playbook. You can find me on Spotify and Entrepreneur, Apple, Google, everywhere. You can find me at David Meltzer on all platforms, or email me directly at [email protected]. And I will be happy to personally get back to you with books, guides, exercises, TV shows, podcasts. Everything’s free. So just reach out to me and I’m happy to be of service as long as you are on my mission to be happy.