Episode 44: Unlocking A Life Of Abundance With David Meltzer

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Unlocking A Life Of Abundance With David Meltzer

I have a special guest with me, David Meltzer. David, hello.

Wade, thanks for having me on.

It is an absolute pleasure. Mutual acquaintance connected us, and I cannot wait to share some of your background and the business successes and challenges you’ve run into, as well as some of the cool things you’re up to at this stage of your life and business. I’m glad to have you on.

I’m so excited to talk about all three. Thanks for having me.

You’re welcome. David, you’ve had quite an interesting business background. Would you mind sharing with us just a little bit about where you’ve come from and some of the interesting experiences you’ve had around business and financial success?

 

 

My journey is a journey of three worlds. The first world was very scarce. I grew up with a single mom, six kids, a mom who worked two jobs, packed my dinner in a paper bag as she drove all six kids around, five boys and one girl, and then filled up turnstiles at convenience stores with greeting cards just so we could eat. That world of not enough was a world in which I felt like a victim.

I always looked at what other people had and thought that this is what I want people to think I am, and I will be happy when I make enough money to trade financial security for my mom to buy her house and a car. Maybe I’ll retire someday. Since my dad left at five, my entire identity was tied for I will be happy when I am going to proving myself. I am a victim, and people laughed at me, scoffed at me, and made fun of me. My goal is to have them applaud me. I learned a lot of lessons from my mom. I always say my mom really didn’t teach me that much.

I wasn’t taught by my mom. She raised six kids, but I caught everything that I knew from watching my mom, which is much more powerful. In fact, as a parent, I tell people all the time, “I don’t expect to teach my kids. They’re not going to be taught by me. They got schools and tutors and internet to teach them, but I want them to catch what I know, and I want them to watch me because I know I’m doing the right thing, saying the right things, thinking the right things, feeling the right things if they’re catching what I learned, what I caught from my mom.”

This world of scarcity had good and bad things to it. I wanted to be rich, and I had a whole bunch of different things. I thought my mom had a philosophy about being rich. You’re either a doctor, a lawyer, or a failure. I want to be a professional football player, even though I didn’t really have the skills to do so. My major achievement at a young age was playing in college. Although I think I ran over by Christian Okoye. The Nigerian nightmare, though, next year will be the AFC player of the year.

I remember lying on my back when he ran me over, saying to myself, “Doctor, lawyer, or failure.” Eventually, I graduated from law school, and that’s when I moved into the second phase of my life. I was an oil and gas attorney. I went to law school to be an oil and gas attorney because they were paid the most money. I wanted to be rich. I was very intentional at a young age about where I went and why I went there.

For the sake of buying my mom a house and a car, I actually got offered a job in 1992, a $150,000 plus bonus. I didn’t take it because somebody else offered me a job in 1992, selling legal research on the internet for $250,000 of plan. Although my mom told me the internet was a fad, it would never work. Made me take the bar just in case it didn’t work. I was outside of law school. I was a millionaire. Three years later, in 1995, we exited to Thomson Reuters for $3.4 billion.

I now entered a new world with my mom, a house and a car, and having more money than I ever dreamed of. A world of just enough for me. Instead of everything happening to me, it now happens for me. We know a lot of optimists out there who talk about the world for me. The problem with the world for me, it’s still scarce. Everything for me was a trade, a negotiation. The more I gave, the more I would receive, everything quid pro quo.

All of these different theories and philosophies were actually scarce based. It was a really challenging event in my life. I’m losing as I became CEO of the world’s most notable sports agency in the world. I had left Samsung as the CEO of their danger division. Ironically, I wanted to be a sports agent as a young kid, once I could be a football player. Ironically, I was hired to be the CEO of the biggest, most notable sports agency in the world.

Not because I was a great lawyer or a great sports marketer or media person, but it was because I was the only one with such a great venture capital background and technology background. Lee Steinberg in the early 2000s, his vision was that sports would be totally reliant upon venture capital and this technology. He was so right. Luckily, I got that job, but I went from the world of just enough to the world of not enough again. I lost everything. I went bankrupt. I lost over $100 million.

I lost my mom’s house, which was the only reason I wanted to be rich. Eighteen years ago, in 2008, when I went bankrupt, it was the greatest lesson in promotion, protection, love, and perfection for me to not only ask for help and the wisdom that’s necessary to be successful, but to utilize my faith in something bigger than me that protected, loved, and promoted me. Eighteen years later, I make more money than I ever did. I help more people than I ever dreamed of, and I have more fun. I’m happier than I ever could be.

That’s a lot, David.

You asked for my journey. That’s a lot.

To compress decades into just a few minutes of sharing that, I mean, that’s an incredible journey. Coming from scarcity into a strong motivation for riches, achieving riches, falling back into scarcity because of things maybe you didn’t understand and pressures or outside of your influence, bankruptcy, back to success, but in a much different way. How would you say your mindset is different?

It’s a shift in a paradigm. It’s a really simple shift, and it’s one I try to teach so many people. Many people live their lives in entrepreneurship and business. In fact, they found out in a study, no matter how much money people have, on average, they’ll be happy when they have 2 to 3 times more money. It doesn’t matter how much you have. This is the problem with I’ll be happy when it’s actually our most important outcome.

I live my life without the energy gap. I live my life with I am. This is not what I want people to think I am. My paradigm shift was it is based on having wisdom and faith. I am happy. I am healthy. I am wealthy. I am worthy. What am I doing to interfere with it? People ask me all the time, I’m 57 years old, “How do you have so much energy? I cannot believe how much I see you everywhere. I cannot believe all this stuff you’re doing. How do you have so much energy? You’re not stronger than me, faster than me, taller than me, or younger than me. How are you going to have all this energy?”

 

I said, “You have the same amount of energy as I have. You have the same amount of intelligence, inspiration, and intuition. You’re just interfering with it more.” I teach people to figure out what they’re doing to interfere with their higher self, their potential. I teach them to enjoy the consistent, persistent pursuit of their potential. I teach them to enjoy what they don’t like or love about what they love, which is a great way to shorten the distance of resistance in your life.

There were some great alliterations in there. We need to back up just a second, because you’re talking about teaching people these things. I want to capture them at a slower pace, but I want to know who these people are that you’re reaching out to, and what these key phrases are that you just said. Can you repeat that, please, for us?

The people that we reach out to, first of the fastest way, the biggest mistake I made, by the way, when I lost everything. When someone tells you, “I lost everything,” the first question you should ask is how. They paid some dummy tax. You don’t want to pay that dummy tax. “I lost everything because I didn’t ask for help.”

Knowing who is a powerful tool because the fastest way to get to where you want to be or better is to find someone who’s already there. Ask them for directions and then also help other people get to where they want to be. I reached out to people like Bob Proctor and Steve Wynn, and Wayne Dyer. Some didn’t even know me. I simply told them, “You’re someone who knows something about where I want to be, mindset, heart, center, handset. Sharon Lector, you know about money. You did the game, cashflow. You did Rich Dad Poor Dad with Kiyosaki.”

The fastest way to get where you want to be is to find someone who is already there and ask them for directions.

Sharon Lector helped me understand I’m great at making money. I’ve always made money, but I’m not good at keeping it. Teach me about not making money, but engineering wealth. For me, some of the things that I said in those alliterations were about being able to have the behaviors about first who I am and what I’m connected to. Especially social media. Young kids, they’re so worried. This is what I think. This is what I want you to think I am.

This is an energy gap. When you start figuring out what I am doing to interfere with the infinite power that I’ve been given, the infinite intelligence, intuition, energy. When you start figuring out this paradigm shift that I’m interfering with, I have to go get it. This idea we talked about, I’ll be happy when I can tell you how many people I still hear from. I’ll be happy when why not ask yourself a more important question for the sake of what. You see, when you talk about it for the sake of what you now start to enjoy the process every day without quitting, in alignment with where you want to be.

Now what other people want, not what’s missing, not what you don’t have. I also suggested that at the end is I got really fired up, that one of the key components of enjoying consistent, persistent pursuit of your potential is learning to love what you don’t like or love about what you love. People think you’ve got to love what you do. You’ve got to love what you do, and you’ll never work a day in your life. I’ll tell you this. If you’re working, there’s a reason they’re paying for you.

That’s because most people don’t love everything about what you do, including playing football professionally. They pay those people for a reason, not because they don’t love playing in the game, but they had to learn to love tapings and filmings and getting hurt and people interrupting their dinners every day and stopping them in the airport when they’re late to go pick up their kids. These are the realities of things that I saw that I said, “These people are paid what they deserve. Not because they’re great football players, but because of the s*** that they have to put up with. The stuff that they don’t love, and they’ve learned to love it for years, and took on the risks.”

I think the realization of the mindset is that you need to enjoy by learning to love not just what you love, but learning to love what you don’t like or love about what you love. In fact, I also suggest, Wade, you may be married like me. It’s great marital advice and parenting advice because anybody who is married and tells me they love or like everything about their spouse or love or like everything about their kids is a liar. The people who learn to love but don’t like her love are the ones who are happy.

You need to enjoy loving not just what you love, but also the things you do not like about it.

I’ve heard there’s about 30% of us that are moldable, and about 70% of us it’s pretty rigid in relationships. If we only focus on that 70% that’s rigid, we’ll never be happy in the relationship. We’ve got to learn to love that piece, and I love what you’re bringing up in terms of how we do that with ourselves, too. I am who I am. I’m okay with that. Learning to have self-love. That’s a big challenge a lot of the world is dealing with, is they’re always looking outside of themselves at what other people are doing and thinking it’s better than what they have. They’re divinely created to be incredible individuals, uniquely gifted at bringing a mission to this world that only they can bring.

You cannot find outside of you what you cannot see inside of you. I think every entrepreneur, every business person, when you’re talking about engineering wealth, and I’m making money, like this show does. Accelerating and engineering great wealth, social wealth, health wealth, family wealth, and financial wealth, when you look at the idea of it, we have to realize that we are on this journey, and we are actually in an infinite loop of wealth.

Let me explain quickly. People think the more you give, the more you receive. That’s true. Every religious, spiritual, philosophical, and scientific text that I’ve read about giving doesn’t say the more you give, the more you receive. It says the more you give, the more you will be given. Most people don’t realize all that they’re given. They don’t have the mindset to see when there’s no evidence or the evidence is contrary to me being successful, that I’m actually being given something to get me to be successful.

I’m not being punished. When I lost everything, I lost my mom’s house. I remember telling my mom, “I cannot believe this. I lost your house. I lost over a hundred million dollars. Why is God punishing me?” She said, “God doesn’t punish you. He’s protecting you, promoting you, loving and perfecting you. You’re just too stupid to see how.”

I said, “Mom, I don’t even believe in God.” She said, “Son, you believe in God, you just believe in the wrong God.” Her humility and understanding, this is the wisdom that changed my life to say, “No longer would I say to myself, this evidence is contrary, therefore I’m not going to make it. It’s where I can find the light, the love, and the lesson of what I’m given here and receive it so that I can ask for even more.”

My mathematical equation of abundance is give more, be given more, receive more, and ask for more than more, so you can give more than more, receive more than more, and ask for more than more than more. The most generous kind people, teachers, and first responders, US vets, all these kind, wonderful people, they’re in a zero-sum game. You know this about the Wealth Acceleration as your podcast suggests. Most people who are wonderful people give more and receive less. If you give more than you’re going to receive, I’m sorry, you will end up at zero.

Clarify what you mean by people who give more than they are going to receive. Do you see that as a choice?

Yes. Most people deny people the greatest feeling. See, the greatest feeling, the highest self, is when we’re able and capable of helping other people. When people are offering help, or you’re not asking for help, you’re cheating other people of the highest self. The act of receiving is actually an act of giving someone an opportunity to feel great, to be their higher self. Most people, like my mom, were offered so much help, but “No, I feel bad. We don’t need it.”

The highest self we can achieve is our ability to help other people. If you are not asking for help, you are cheating other people of their highest selves.

She was cheating not only herself, but also her family. She just would have said, “Yes, thank you.” Now I’m able to give more to my children and my community. I’m more stable. I have more. I’m going to believe that God has more than enough of everything for everyone. Therefore, I’m going to ask for more than more. I wish people like my mom had more because they would give it away to the right places for the right reasons.

I talk about money all the time. I believe for a third of my life that money bought love and happiness. I believe that without a doubt. I know now that money does not buy love or happiness, but what it does is allow you to shop. If you shop for the right things, for the right reasons, you will have much love and much happiness in your life.

Money to me is important. My motto is to make a lot of money so you can help a lot of people and have a lot of fun. I wish I had half as much money as Bezos so I could help more people. That’s the only reason I want his money. I have everything I ever wanted and even more. I want more money so I can help more people, because I know it takes a lot of money to help more people.

Tell me what it takes in your view to get to that mindset, because a lot of people are living hand to mouth, they’re living paycheck to paycheck. They’re really just living it. “If I had more money, I could pay off the debt. If I had more money, I could pay off the house, or I could get the dream house.” They’re still in that stage of getting physical assets that give certain stability. What does it take to get to the point where you can really, truly think like you’re thinking?

First of all, start thinking about practicing it instead of getting there. We lower the bar, and we start making non-negotiable commitments and non-negotiable behaviors every day. See, there’s some physics of time that two minutes a day of full attention and intention equals two hours on Saturday. What we pay attention to, regardless of where we are today and what we give our intention to, equals the coincidence, the coinciding of what we desire.

If you’re thinking paycheck by paycheck, how can I ever get ahead? Go ahead and assign some time to the behaviors that are going to get you ahead 2 minutes a day, 5 minutes a day, 10 minutes a day, regardless of the circumstances of the day. My non-negotiable behavior, which is majority sleep, is regardless of the circumstances, twelve hours a day, minimum seven on my sleep, minimum of an hour on my health, minimum of an hour with my family, a minimum amount of time studying finance, studying faith, studying relativity, and time. No matter what the circumstances, interest rates, weather, delays, arguments, it doesn’t matter.

Regardless of where I started, which was my basement had a basement on both of my restarts and starts, 90% of my success is attributed to my non-negotiable behavior because I cannot give what I don’t have. I recover and access information in my sleep better than anyone. I have been a sleep coach for eighteen years. I spend a minimum of an hour a day with my family. I spend a minimum of an hour a day on my health. If you’re not healthy, you’re only going to have one wish a day. What can you do with one wish? Not very much.

I go to my finances, where every single day I have activity, and I get paid for seven days a week. I have studied time, my faith, and relativity. Relativity is the meaning that the co-creation power God gave us. Now I have twelve hours to do whatever I want. According to the circumstances of the day, prioritizing by what I want, who I can help, can help me, best to get it done so that I can apply my why instead of searching for what I already have. I apply my why by shortening the distance of resistance of looking and being aware of what I do to interfere with it.

If you have nothing right now, I’ll tell you what you should do. Assign some time to go ahead and ask someone who is sitting financially where you want to be for help. When I lost everything, I went to Bob Proctor, and Bob Proctor gave me a few quick pieces of advice that got me on track. He said, “Number one, David, you spend too much time visiting with people you don’t know or barely know. You need to spend time visiting with the people important to you. Spend five minutes on average on a phone call and twenty minutes on average in a meeting instead of all this wasted time visiting with people you don’t know or you want to know.”

Do not spend too much time with people you do not or barely know. Spend it instead with people important to you.

“Two, only save. I know it’s not great long-term economic advice, but I see you as capable of making money, but you don’t know how to pay yourself and keep it. What I want you to do is I want you to save this amount of money before you do anything else. Before you buy a car, before you buy a house, you’re going to have this much money in the bank. That’s all I want you to focus on. Because you’re good at making it, you’ve got to learn this relationship of paying yourself and keeping.”

David, I know you’ve got other commitments to get to. Is there anything else you’d like to be able to share about what you’re up to or how people can follow you?

I just love your community and love what you’re doing. I would be honored if I could send my book. I will send it, I will pay for shipping, pay for the book, and I will sign it if somebody wants. If anybody would email me directly at David@DMeltzer.com, it’s pinned there right there in this community. I’d be happy to give you these foundational principles, these lessons. I paid the dummy tax. I will be happy to send you my book. I will pay for shipping and pay for the book.

That would be an honor for me in my mission of empowering over a billion people on earth to be happy by teaching them to make a lot of money, help a lot of people, and have a lot of fun. The reason I say that is I’ve never met anyone, Wade, who makes a lot of money to help a lot of people and has a lot of fun every day that isn’t happy. I’m trying to elevate the happiness on this earth. That’s my contribution and capability. It takes people like you to give me an opportunity to share these types of philosophy strategies, mindset, hearts, and hands that I know I can empower people with to do just that.

That’s so generous of you. Remind our audience of the title of your book.

The one I’d like to send is one that is out called Connected to Goodness, but I also have a pre-order. I’m not launching it until the Super Bowl, but it has a great name. I’ve written eight books. I wrote a book with Jack Canfield called Be Unstoppable: Creating the Life You Love. I wrote Compassionate Capitalism. I wrote all these beautiful names. I went for a different angle. You’ll like this.

I want to sell my book… millions of copies. My new book on the Super Bowl is called Don’t Do Business With Dicks. A little marketing, same great content, very abundant, generous energy, energetic content, but I had to get the old hook in there. That’s the most clever title that I have been able to create. Why don’t you get a free book first? Learn and see if you like what I do and how I do it. If so, we get talked about, Don’t Do Business with Dicks at a later date.

That’d be fun. The book, again, Connected to Goodness, is a very generous offer. If you want to email David, we’ll have his email in the show notes, and you guys can get a free copy of that book. David, thank you so much for your time, and I hope you have a wonderful day.

I look forward to having you on my shows, Wade. Thank you for the opportunity.

Have a great day. See you.

Thank you.

 

Episode Resources

• David Meltzer
• Connected to Goodness -email David at David@DMeltzer.com to get a signed copy of the book
• Don’t Do Business With Dicks – pre-order
• Be Unstoppable: Creating the Life You Love
• Compassionate Capitalism
• Rich Dad Poor Dad