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The First 100 Podcast: A Journey of Abundance with David Meltzer
Host: Daniela Hello, everybody. Welcome to The First 100 Podcast. This is the podcast where we explore the journey of entrepreneurs, business owners, agency leaders who share with us the experiences that they’ve had, strategies, challenges, and triumphs that have led them to secure those first 100 customers. I’m your host, Daniela, and I’m Penji’s partnership coordinator. Today, I’m joined with a very special guest, David Meltzer. Hi, David. How are you?
Guest: David Meltzer Fantastic. Thanks for taking the time to have me here.
Host: Daniela Very excited to have you today on the podcast. So just so that we can get started, get everything warmed up for anybody who’s listening and watching that doesn’t know who you are or doesn’t know about you, can you tell us a little bit about yourself, what you do?
From “Not Enough” to “More Than Enough”
Guest: David Meltzer Sure. Well, I kind of lived a journey of three different worlds. Started with the world of not enough where I was born in Akron, Ohio to a single mom with six kids who packed my dinner in a paper bag as she was a second-grade teacher and then filled up turnstiles at convenience stores with greeting cards just so we could eat. So my world of not enough as a victim, my solution was to be rich. I wanted to buy my mom a house and a car. And I learned a lot of lessons along the way, trying to be a professional football player, which was a silly shot of a dream, to being a doctor and finding out I didn’t like hospitals, to finally going to law school and being very intentional about being an oil and gas litigator because they made the most money out of law school.
Unfortunately, I did not become a lawyer. I took the bar but ended up in the Internet in 1992, despite my mom telling me the Internet was a fad and it never would last. Nine months out of law school, I was a millionaire and I learned that money actually did buy happiness, but it didn’t buy fulfillment, passion, or purpose. And three years after I graduated law school, we exited to Thompson Reuters for $3.4 billion. I then moved my technology career into middleware in the Silicon Valley, raised hundreds of millions of dollars. And in 1999, became CEO of Samsung’s data division, their first convergence device.
And at that time, at 31 years old, thought I had everything. I lived in the world of just enough for me, buying stuff I didn’t need to impress people I didn’t like. Money did make me happy. But once again, did not bring me fulfillment, passion, or purpose. And I learned as I ventured to run the most notable sports agency in the world, Lee Steinberg Sports Entertainment—they made the movie Jerry Maguire about our firm—I learned that if your purpose is not greater than your pain, you’re in big trouble.
And so in 2008, running the most notable sports agency in the world, I lost everything. I lost over $100 million while I was married to my dream girl with three daughters under ten who were healthy and happy. And that’s when I started my journey in 2008, sixteen years ago, to make a lot of money, to help a lot of people, and have a lot of fun, to live in passion, purpose, and profitability, and in a journey of empowering others to do the same. So I went from the world of not enough to the world of just enough to this world that I live in today as a speaker, author, coach. I have my own media company and do several different movies, TV shows, all to empower people to live in abundance. And I live in that world of more than enough. And that’s why I’m here today to hopefully empower over a thousand people to empower a thousand to empower a thousand to change the collective consciousness of the world to be happy.
The Drive for Financial Stability and Family Dynamics
Host: Daniela You know, that’s like, this is probably a tangent, but what you said about sort of growing up with a big family and then wanting to have money because of that really resonated with me because I was five kids. Right. So it’s very similar to you. And I’ve seen my parents struggle financially raising us throughout the years and how much it has taken a toll on them and just grow gray hairs from just—I think people don’t realize how hard it is to actually think about breakfast, lunch, and dinner for so many children and yourself. It’s like massive amounts of food right that you had to like buy and stuff and and I had the same feeling that you did of like I want to buy my mom a house, I want to give her a car, I want to like because you just see all of these financial struggles and I think it really resonated with me because it really does give you that drive of like I need money, yeah.
Guest: David Meltzer And it also, usually, we had five boys and a girl, you have a greater family life than most people. You have more love with that many people that are relative to you in such a small space, especially if you don’t have a lot of money. And so there’s this dichotomy of you have so much more than most people have, but you don’t realize it because every day there’s financial stress, whether it’s the rent, the car, anything that ever breaks down in your life, anything that ever doesn’t go as planned is a financial stress. Yeah, you know, and so because every day holds things that don’t go as you plan, there’s financial stresses every day. So it is almost impossible growing up with that many kids that you don’t focus in on the only thing that causes disease in your life, which is finance.
Host: Daniela Yeah, it’s true. I mean, I think like that it really speaks to me like because I think that that’s kind of like been my experience from like a big family perspective of, you know, like all of the issues are usually surrounding money. Right. Because emotionally you have so much, you know, you’re never lonely with a big family because there’s always someone in the house. And, you know, you have entertainment and you don’t need to invite anybody to a party because your family’s the party.
Guest: David Meltzer You don’t need Bravo because you’re living it.
Host: Daniela Literally. Yeah.
Guest: David Meltzer And I learned so much about I actually even learned later on in life that, I have OCD and I would be so neat because everything was so chaotic. And so the only thing I can control was the things around me. So I put them all in order. So I put things where and so I was always clean, neat and even cleaning the house for my mom because the only sense of control that I had or ease was. And now that I’m 56 and in a different situation, we have four kids. But when things get chaotic, I do different things and I start focusing in on other things that give me control when chaos exists. And it all stems back from living in daily chaos is a huge superpower because it allows you to have your purpose be greater than the pain or the perspective that comes from chaos.
Host: Daniela Yeah, for real. And it’s like that, like I said, this is probably like a tangent, but it just really spoke to me because I have like a very similar situation and everything that you said was like, oh my gosh, yes, that’s so true. And it really, I think it’s like one of the biggest factors that pushes people like that to like want to grow, which actually brings me to my first question, which is, I mean, you have had an incredible journey from like throughout your entire lifetime, right? You, you experience lows and then highs and then lows and then highs. It’s kind of like how you’ve described it. That journey from, you mentioned that in 2008, you sort of, you know, you lost all of this, right? You stopped being a CEO. You transitioned into this sort of thought leader, new idea. How has all of this changed the way that you approach leadership, your entrepreneurial journey in general? How has all of this changed your views and how you approach it?
Leading with Purpose: The Power of “Through Me”
Guest: David Meltzer I think from those worlds of for me to through me. So the perspective of me as a leader in the corporate world and my own business, it was for me. And I was constantly in the transaction, trading and negotiating, even giving. I was extremely abundant and won all these humanitarian awards and been blessed to be honored and given millions of dollars. But even in my giving, it was transactional. I was giving to receive. And now as a leader, I became an intelligent follower, someone who listens for what other people want, learning from them what they value, to give them more of what they like and take away some, if not all, of what they don’t like, to provide true value by empowering and elevating others to elevate myself as a true leader.
And so for me, instead of living in a zero-sum game where I was giving to receive, but always receiving less than I gave, but expecting the more I gave, the more I would receive, I delved into, as you mentioned, the thought leadership of changing the way I looked at things. And the things I look at then changed in understanding abundance and having not only wisdom as a leader, but faith, faith that there was something bigger than me and our mission, all-powerful, all-knowing source to be a resource, a leader of in order to effectuate giving more. Elevating my awareness through gratitude and forgiveness, accountability, and even inspiration to identify what I’ve been given. So the more that I would give, the more I could see what I was given. No longer was I punished in the world of not enough as a victim or living in the world of buying stuff I didn’t need to impress people I didn’t like, but instead an elevated, abundant world, a unified, abundant system of thought that I could lead in to give more and be given more and then feel worthy through wisdom and faith, shortening the distance of resistance that I created for myself to receive more and then even elevating my faith to ask for more.
And when I learned the more I gave, the more I was given, the more I was given, the more I could receive, the more I received, the more I could ask for, instead of trading more for less, I gave more, was given more, received more, asked for more than more, now is able to give more than more, be given more than more, receive more than more, and ask for more than more than more. And I know where I’m going to end up when I’m with more than enough of everything for everyone, living as a leader in abundant, with wisdom and faith, shortening the distance of resistance in my life.
Cultivating Resilience in the Face of Adversity
Host: Daniela That’s amazing. And I actually wanted to ask you, because all of this journey has obviously, you’ve learned a lot from that and you can sit here right now on the other side and say it, but while you were going through all of this, through all of these highs and all these lows and, you know, when you thought that you had lost everything and you’re sort of, you worked hard for this and now you’re back on square one. How did you mentally navigate these kinds of challenges? How did your resilience play a role in this? Or, you know, did you have to like build it from scratch? I think it’s for people who find themselves at rock bottom or at like, not necessarily rock bottom, but just like at a place where they never expected to be. It’s really hard to find the mental capacity to pull yourself out of it.
Guest: David Meltzer Yeah, I think understanding outcomes. And when I stopped focusing my attention and intention on the outcomes, what I wanted, what other people wanted, what was missing, what I didn’t have, searching for what I was afraid of. And I realized that the search of outcomes and the search of fear are infinite in its nature. And it was a waste of my time. What I realized was if I can analyze the enjoyment of the consistent, persistent pursuit of my potential by looking at the behaviors. See, good behaviors are only determined by yourself, what your divine direction is of where you want to be or better. And we’re only limited to where we get to by two things: the meaning of the past, the separation of the past, the failure, setbacks, mistakes of the past successes, defining moments, even historical relevances of the past and our self-image. And we will never overachieve our own self-image.
And so when I started to analyze the values that I had and the practices of my behavior that I was utilizing, and how congruent it was with my execution on my behaviors, I realized that there is no pursuit of happiness, that happiness was the pursuit. And if I aligned my behavior and defined my behavior is good by aligning it with my divine direction and divine time, that the divine detours that occurred in my life, the problems, setbacks, mistakes, failures, which I had huge ones. I lost over $100 million, went bankrupt, even had to ask my mom to move out of her house. So you can imagine the divine detours that I took. But in that behavior, the only outcome that I’m concerned with is progress. And I’m too as a human being incapable of understanding or knowing how losing everything, how losing over $100 million could actually be a promotion and protect me from myself and be a form of love to put me in a better place, a better situation, a divine direction. And that divine detour defined me as who I am today and provided me the ability to make more money than I ever did, have more fun than I ever have, and live my life to help other people. And I help more people than I ever have.
And so for me, I don’t look at fear or outcomes. I only look at the reaction of me in my fear because it’s instant and obvious. So when I’m angry, upset, resentful, separate, inferior, superior, anxious, frustrated, guilty, resentful, it’s obvious and it’s instant. And so I just use time to spend minutes and moments interfering with where I want to be. So instead of trying to get more in a transactional way my whole life, I am already there. I am happy. I am healthy. I am wealthy. I am worthy. I just got to figure out what I’m doing to interfere with it. And it’s the reaction to fear that interferes with it. And I want to spend less time in that reaction to fear. And so that’s been the strategy of knowing my values, gratitude, forgiveness, accountability, and inspiration in an execution model based off of daily practices, behaviors of knowing what I want today by not only creating a divine direction, but looking at the meaning of the past, who I can help, who can help me, how best to get it done, and then prioritize my day accordingly and apply my why, not search for it.
Host: Daniela That’s interesting. And I wanted to ask as well, because, you know, you’ve also been emphasizing a lot gratitude and giving back to your community and, you know, sort of you get a lot, but you also give a lot, right? How can…
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