David Meltzer - Understanding Taylor Swift's $330M Impact on The NFL & The Future of Podcasting

Welcome back to the Casey Adams Show. Today we are joined by David Meltzer. David, thank you so much for coming to show again.

Oh, man, this is. I feel like Saturday alive, you know, And I'm Chevy Chase.

Yeah, right, exactly.

And I'll be like, I'm a three timer. And by the time I'm Chevy's age, you'll be six timers, literally.

I was talking about with Jacqueline here. You're the only guest that's been on the show for the third time now.

Nice.

And, you know, we're making. We're making monuments now.

You're old enough to drink and get married. So when I first met you, I don't think you're old enough to drive.

Barely. Barely. You know, so 17 years old.

Yeah.

Right. No, it's interesting when I was coming here too, like, speaking of, you know, being the third. Third time guest on the show, you've been in my life so consistent over the years from being like one of the first mentors on social, from afar, someone like you and Gary, to being like one of the first podcast guests on my show, to being literally the first investor in my last company.

And I made money, by the way, so I put enough pressure on it. That's good.

Yeah, indeed. So first, I just want to say I'm forever grateful for you and I appreciate you so much for taking the time.

Well, I appreciate you. I really do. I've always been proud of you, consider you part of my family from the day I met you. And, you know, Uncle Dave was there and now what the cool thing is, I literally am going to be your Uncle Dave.

I'm a closer. What can I say? You know, let's have some fun today. You know, I want to talk about sports right now. You know, we, we were just, we had some big games over the weekend. Lions were sadly lost, you know, as I've came back, but super bowl is happening next weekend in Vegas, and something that I know everyone out there has constantly seen is Taylor Swift's impact on the NFL. And, you know, I'll see these numbers thrown out. Like, she's added $330 million of enterprise value for the season. For someone like you that's been in sports marketing and is also in media, what's your thoughts on what's happening with Taylor Swift, the NFL, and just everything that's coming from that?

Well, I think in all sports, looking at it as a backdrop. So my first real connection was running Lee Steinberg Sports and Entertainment, the most notable sports agency in the world. And I learned A valuable lesson from Lee. And it was the irrationality of middle aged men at that time. Because the movie Jerry Maguire wasn't a sports film. But people will tell me still today, Dave, that movie is my favorite sports movie. I'm like, it's not a sports movie. It's a love story, a backdrop of sports. And as you start seeing from my first inception and being, you know, a business executive of sports, a front office guy, an agent, a sports marketer, all the things I've done, I've always kept that in my mind. How can I use my skills, my knowledge and my desire with the backdrop of the rationality, the emotional connection of sports. Not dating, by the way, that there's only two ways to provide value, which is to give people more of what they like or take away what they don't like. So under that premise, if you look at how the impact in the NFL with someone like Taylor Swift is that she now gives fans more of what they like and take away what they don't like. And where it's interesting for me in the evolution was it started with EA and you know, my son Miles, Y and Miles was 5 years old and my business partner Warren Moon, who you also know, I said, Warren, can you sit down with Miles? I can't. And I know football, I can't teach him football. And he said I can't teach a five year old football, Dave. You have to buy a Madden. Madden will teach him football and Madden will develop what he likes and what he doesn't like about football without him getting hit. And so the first thing is that started to give the emotional attachment in the backdrop of sports as a business was EA Sports and Madden because it was a complicated game and now Madden made football easy to understand too fantasy.

Yeah.

We built this audience of men and women because you could start by just knowing certain players and positions and enjoy more of what they like and take away what they don't like if they are confused or other things. Yeah, now we get into an interesting circumstance because the community of people that like and don't like certain things, a community of people that are there to help each other enjoy teams, leagues, organizations and get more people to help enjoy that they now can mix in people of variant audiences. So take Taylor Swift. Most of Taylor Swift's fans are not NFL fans and most NFL fans, and there's so many, the overlay is there in the millions. But when you say most, the majority of NFL fans don't go to watch football because Taylor Swift is there, of course. And Most of them won't mortgage their house to buy tickets to Taylor Swift concert to make David Meltzer even richer. They won't do that. But when you start figuring out that we can merge communities by utilizing content at certain backdrops, there's this exponentiality acceleration in compounding of interest that occurs. And so now you take two mega brands that already have this much overlay and you now make it this much. And that creates $330 million of impact in one year.

Yeah, it's even hearing that too. Just the, the backdrop and sports going back to Madden or fantasy. It's interesting you when you say that and I want to talk about the fantasy aspect for a bit here. I was in Nashville back in November and I was able to spend time with love that well, I was there with Paul, one of the co founders of DraftKings and we were at the DraftKings Sports Bar Lounge and we were just like diving into the world of fantasy sports. Like the origin story of it. When you were working initially in sports, where was fantasy at in its life cycle when you were there and how did you think about it back then? Because I feel like I can't go on any social media platform nowadays without getting bombarded with fantasy ads. And it's, it's such a big business. You see people like Jake Paul making a big swing with better into the market. What's your overall viewpoint on fantasy, where it is today and where you saw it when you were first starting your career in sports.

So it started with rotisserie baseball before I was in the profession of sports and then it moved to fantasy baseball. That's where it really started.

First fantasy.

Yeah. So history baseball was a game that gave individual players points for doing certain things that evolved into fantasy baseball with drafts of your own players in your own team. Which then because of the success of fantasy baseball, other sports like golf, football, basketball, hockey started to create their own fantasy leads. The interesting thing though was that football had taken over as the Most popular sport 2 to 1 with women in America, which led to more women wanting to play fantasy because it was easy to understand, it was competitive and they felt included into what most men like to do so they could go to a bar without having that much knowledge of the game and with no stories of I played football.

Yeah.

And be able to talk shit and win leagues, money, etc. Now that's then led to the precursor of legalizing gambling which in history, human nature never changes. And eventually if you're going to start competing and giving prizes whenever you Give prizes, lottery prizes, it raffles, it leads to gambling and the legality of gambling. So if you want to understand how to invest, because human nature never changes, study history, see what today is a raffle, see what today is a content with prizes. And someday there'll be legalized gambling for it.

So fascinating even too like some. I had someone on my podcast recently, this guy Sam, and he was 21 years old when he saw like the early inception of legalizing sports betting here in the US and instead of, you know, trying to build this crazy sports betting platform that's a consumer platform that, you know, has hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions, he said, okay, there's all these big companies that need a sports book. What if we just go build the best tech platform because everyone's outsourcing their, you know, the development overseas. What if I just build the best platform, get through all the regulations, do some partnerships with the NBA, NFL, which is not easy. And about two and a half years later, he was 23 at the time and sold the business for $40 million to Fubu without one single user on the platform. And it's just kind of like you said, like seeing the early. What was it like the raffles or whatever it may be in the different industries.

Well, look, even my podcast, you know, I know my exit strategy is based off of gambling because I know most of the people that enjoy my podcast, beyond the woo woo, thought leader side of stuff, there's a huge sports and entertainment audience that I have, right? The original Playbook was only sports and entertainment, and now we have, you know, two separate. We have the sports entertainment playbook and then we have the thought leader inspirational Playbook with all the great people on it. But the interesting thing is I already know and look, I'm very public about it. I have no advertisers on my Playbook, right. I have 17, or I think 1748 episodes on on the Playbook.

Wow.

But what most people don't understand, I'm almost at a million people in my database. So not followers, Ambassadors. And why is that important? Because I know there's companies out there which, you know, the other David over at Barstool proved that. There's companies like Penn, there's companies like Mohegan, Sun, MGM. Those companies, right, today are paying $112 per ambassador. And so for the value, right. For a brand. So my Playbook, you know, let's say I get to a million here in 2024 of ambassadors is probably worth over $100 million. And I've never had one advertiser ever.

Wow.

Because once again, if you understand business, and this is why I invested in you, and while invest in you again is if you understand business, then you see the clues and the patterns and you make the choices that are aligned with the clues and patterns. And in other words, I've learned through paying my dummy tax, the secrets. And it's much more clear on buying real estate, buying insurance, buying stocks, because I understand through history how things are successful. There's no doubt, even with your podcast, that I would be building your community of people buying from you and selling for you. Because if they buy from you and sell for you, whether it's gambling or something else out there, eventually someone will buy without you having anything else than a community. They'll buy your community for more money than your product.

Wow. Now that note, what makes an ambassador or a great ambassador, in your opinion?

Yeah. So when I started with Gary Vee, as you know, Gary asked me, so, you know, what do you. For the sake of what? Which always made me love Gary, because I met with a ton of people and none of them ever asked me, for the sake of what. And so Gary had convinced me to do a podcast instead of radio. And then he asked, okay, if we're going to do the podcast for the sake of what? And I said, to build an ambassadorship. And he said, well, what does that mean? Same question you just asked. I said, an ambassador is someone that buys from you and sells for you for life, not a product. They buy from you. Your ideas, your philosophies, your theories, your spirituality. They buy from you. Product, services, solutions, or maybe just your brand. And I think if you look at anyone in social media my age that does what I do, the differentiator is I may not have as many followers, but those people that have fake followers have fake communities that enjoy fake things. Yeah, I have an inspirational community. People who make a lot of money, help a lot of people, and have a lot of fun. I have people that aren't following me. You know, I remember being in a Super bowl and Shelly Eibach, the CEO of Sleep Number, came up to me and she's like, I love your content, Dave. Can you come over and do an interview? I'm like, yeah. I go, where do you follow me? She said, I don't follow you. I watch you on LinkedIn. Wow. So I have no notation of her. Anything but the impact of what we do. She's an ambassador of David Meltzer. She's buying from me and selling for me for Life. Do you know how successful you'll be with an ambassador that buys from you and sells for you for life? That's how Apple is made. That's how Tesla is made. People are religious about a product, service, solution, or a brand because they're buying from you. And selling for you is the easiest and fastest and least expensive way to sell more and to buy more and to sell more to others and help them do the same.

And that's. That's powerful. And so the podcast, when you started off, that kind of brings me to what I want to talk about next. Just, I'm starting this new company in the world of podcasting, listener.com. and it's all things podcasting.

Bring us domains, man.

I hunted that domain down for a year. I'm actually. I was just reading this blog post. I just did this, like, exclusive interview with GoDaddy because I worked with their broker service.

Yeah.

Took me a year to get this domain. And, you know, they'll tell the stories of, like, launching the company on a premium domain. I have A, I place value and importance on that because A, first impressions and B, if you can get it, why not?

Yeah. Heck yeah.

So, yeah, listener.com you'll search.

I got a quick story. Because if you have a little bit.

Yeah, please.

So I started in the Internet in 1992, so it wasn't even Westlaw.com yet because there was Netscape and all these other things. Anyway, when domains first came out, talk about you get so busy working, you forget to make money. I told my sales assistant I was making a shitload of money.

Right, 1992.

Right, 1992. So I'm 24 years old, a little bit older than you are now. And I tell my sales assistant at west up in Eagan, I said, hey, I have an extra 30 grand. I want you to go and buy up a whole bunch of domains. And they were a $99 at the time. And I said, buy the dot com. Buy it dot com. And I didn't know any better. I'm like, buy Nike dot com McDonald's dot com. Like, I was just listing off. I said, you know, put together the list.

Yeah.

And invariably months would go by, and I'm like, hey, John, you got that list of domains? Oh, I'll get to it, man. But we're so busy selling, right? We're so busy. So busy working. Imagine if I would have bought $30,000 in that year, in 1992 of domains.

Is that when domains. I don't even know the history. Is that when you could buy a domain in 1992.

Yeah, you could. You could buy domains in that year. In that year. And so it was edu at first cor out of Cornell. And so it was insane. I forget who you bought them through, but they were 1.99 and I think you bought them for $1.99. It wasn't like a yearly subscription.

Yeah, you own it. They transferred to you.

And you sued, you know, like McDonald's sued to get theirs back and Nike sued to get there. But look, but you see the stories, the dot com. Nobody would sue you. That one domain. What about like lottery.com?

Yeah. Vegas.com just sold for. Or one of those sold for like $100 million.

Yeah.

Cars.com, i think is the biggest.

So that, that one was the whole lesson of don't get so busy working you forgot to make money. And how many times have you passed up opportunity because you're so busy deep in your stuff that you're like, like, here's another one I want to do. And I keep on letting it go. Now we get on camera, you'll laugh at me since we're going to be relatives and you're younger. So laugh at me when I'm 90. Okay, so I'm 56. You're 23, right?

Yep, I'm 23.

Okay, so 33 years difference. So 33, let's say 34 years from now, I'm going to be 90. Okay.

Okay.

And now you're going to be my age. You laugh at me because I'm telling you, if you want to buy something right now, that's going to be worth a ton When I'm 90, buy a Tesla Roadster. The first year, 2002, I think the Roadster came out. You can still don't care how many miles are on it.

Okay.

Because think about this. Imagine how much the very first electric, like, electric Tesla is going to be worth.

Yeah.

The very first electric. Imagine how 30 years from now, whenever, that's all we have, and you're like.

You have to have one.

So if it's 100 grand, so what? I watch the bar. I like that spirit shit.

Yeah.

They got. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. In Arizona. I was just watching that in the background. I'm thinking, I gotta buy one. So if I don't buy one, have it when I'm 90, Go, Uncle Dave, Uncle Dave. You're a moron. You don't do what you say. Say what you do, buddy.

Oh, my goodness, I. I love that. In the spirit of Tesla, what about. Do you feel the same way about the Cybertruck or is that a. I.

Just saw the first one at In N Out Burger.

Okay.

Literally this weekend.

Do you think that's a trend or will have longevity of the the style and how people have are like ambassadors for that new product.

I don't think it's going to make it right there. It's like the rock and the xfl. You know there's certain things they just don't have. There's too many. It's just not the real thing. You're right. It's like my PC phone. I was CEO of the first convergence device. It's just too early, too bulky. It's. That idea is going to be great.

Yeah.

And I think two way electric cars generating cars are really the future where not only are you have a car that generates enough energy to fuel it from the sun but it also has and regurgitates that energy. So when you park your car you plug your electric bike into it. Now you can extend and amplify the last mile your tv. So it's creating power too. And look there's technology I know for sure there is cellular technology that you could take a lamp like this, put a panel in front of the lamp and and it will actually generate more power than the power that it cost that lamb. So now we're looking at a value add system, not a zero sum game. That will happen by the time I'm 92.

Wow, that's powerful. I want to touch on you talk about domains right from listener.com to say hey, go buy $30,000 in domains and then realizing you didn't. You know there's times in my life too over the last six years of being in business where I look back and I go wow, if only I did right. And sometimes I've let them kind of get in my head and then I take a step back and I really have to say whoa, why am I letting this hold me back? Or it's just in this constant loop and I learned to not dwell for you like when you think it back on opportunities or how oh like if only I did X How do you deal with regrets? Do you have any regret in your life or what does that look?

You know I lost over $100 million so I'm very clear on really simple rules for me and it's go into it knowing your timing, risk tolerance. So when I invested in you I knew my timing and risk tolerance. I knew it up front. The biggest problem is the lessons I've learned I have no regret. But I took out of it the greatest lesson because if you don't know your timing and risk tolerance, this is what happens. Let's take bitcoin.

Yeah.

Because I saw this happen to so many people. I bought crypto knowing my timing and risk tolerance. So I went in and the first thing I bought was Mana M A N A and it was $0.01. And I watched it and it was moving and I said, when it gets to 10 cents, I'm going to buy, you know, a lot of it. Okay. But timing of risk tolerance, I was willing to lose half of it, meaning if it ever went down to 5 cents, I would sell. And that was going to be the $50,000 that I lost.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah.

Now the other side of it was I'm going to sell half of it when it goes up to where I have all my money out of it. So when it went up to 20 and I made $100,000, went up to 20 cents, I then already knew my timing. No matter what I thought, no matter I thought I was going to go to a million or I thought it was going to go to zero, I. I was only going to sell half of it. So now I'm playing with lottery money.

Yeah.

So now I have very little risk. Yep. So it goes to 20 cents. And then I say, okay, I'm going to sell another half. Another half of what I have at a dollar.

Oh, wow.

So that's five times.

Yeah.

So it hits a dollar. I sell another half. Now I have a quarter now. Now I say I'm going to hold this for miles. My son just. I'm done. I'm not going to watch it. My wife comes in and says it's at $6 and 42 cents, you should sell. And I said no. My timing and risk tolerance is I've already made a ton of money. I have no risk at all. And I am going to give this to my son and leave it to him. Whatever. It's at zero or $60.

Yeah.

I don't care. That's my timing and risk tolerance. And what I realized is it's not whether you make money or lose money, it's knowing your timing and risk tolerance.

Yeah.

That creates no regret. So if you buy a $2 lottery ticket and you know you have a 1 in billion chance to win a half a billion dollars and you're going to find out on Saturday at 8 o', clock, even if you lose your $2 at Saturday at 8 o', clock, it's exactly Aligned with your time and your risk tolerance. Yes, you can be a little disappointed, but there's no regrets. Yeah, there's no. I'm stupid. I should have, could, have, would. And so for me, I teach people, know your timing and risk tolerance and stick to it. Also, know your perceived value and bottom line in any negotiation. Two easiest lessons that people screw up on, you know, a ton of speakers. What makes me and what I think has made my career in speaking is I charge $100,000 to speak. That's my perceived value. I get it when that is my bottom line. If my bottom line is lower, I'll take less. Like, if it's a school, children, whatever, or maybe the audience is really valuable. So I'll take less. Like for the Aspire tour. Yeah, I take less than my perceived value because the audience makes me feel great. All those different things. So know your timing and risk tolerance. You'll never have regrets. You will lose money, but you'll only lose as much as you set out to lose. Like, if it would have went down to 5 cents before it went up to a dollar, I would have not been regretful. I'm like, hey, I sold half of it.

But look, yeah, absolutely. No, it's. It's powerful lesson in there. Appreciate that. I want to end on the topic of all things podcasting and media. There's two things that I saw.

All things media then.

Well, there's. There's two things that I saw the last 24 hours that I kind of relate to. What you said about building an ambassadorship. There's 1 million people and the value of that. So the podcast Smart List, they just did a new deal, I believe, with SiriusXM verse $100 million deal, I think, for three years. This news came out yesterday.

Yesterday.

And then today I saw that just in the different context. But Lewis Howes launched his whole Greatness Media podcast network. And seeing these items and having this conversation, like, what do you think is the future of podcasting? The importance of it. But also media as a whole, as someone that's building a personal and putting out media constantly on social.

Well, there's four areas that you can focus in on to make money, and those are two deals that fit within those very four areas. So if you want to make money, then be better at capturing content. So there's a whole business about, hey, you know, and I'm in this business of capture because it has the most amount of people.

Yeah.

And so I have studios I've invested in, people rent out the studio. So I Provide a service of capture.

Yeah.

And then that, that's one business. And that business will continue to grow. The second business is called modification. And also realize that all the networks in the world, all the platforms in the world, if they close X in Instagram and TikTok, it doesn't matter if you're in the capture business because remember content comes from real life.

Yeah.

And the better you capture the essence of life, the more money you'll make and the more people will want you to make money off of your capture. Second one's called modification. So if we're going to have a whole business on capturing, there's going to be a whole nother everybody that captures going to need people to modify it.

Yeah.

So have a modification business then you have Lewis House and others, XM Blue Wire, you know obviously Spotify, Apple, Google, blah blah blah. Amplify.

Yeah.

So tons of people in the ad spend business. The amplification. The affiliate partner Mia obviously is found. Is my daughter. I'm so proud of her and like she consciously learned lessons from me and created an amplification business. So Ellie Zyler for example, she hired with, she captures the content, modifies it. Now Mia's in the amplified business.

Yeah. Our muse. Yeah, there it is.

Then the last one is one I think I have the leg up on. Like I people do the capture better than I do. I make plenty of money doing capture. They do the modify. Tons of people. The amplify is not a business that I like to get in. It's for Lewis and those guys that want their own network. Dear media, Michael and Lauren are amazing. The Bostics. I've known them since they've started.

That's incredible.

I love Skinny Confidential. Probably you know, kind of like build your empire. The original G's.

Yeah.

But where I'm playing is there's less people in the game because you have to been around a long time. It's called the perpetuation of content. And so I'm very intentional about being in the perpetuation of content which derives the million ambassadors perpetual buying from and selling for. But it also allows you to do a different type of funnel. See there's funnels and capture and amplification and modification. But the true funnel of perpetuation is this. All I need to do is raise your awareness of David Meltzer and I have curated the perpetual David Meltzer, the evergreen David Meltzer. So I'm the only one out there that I know of this, that I have an employee, you know he is, we all mention Names. He. He's not the brightest marble that I have working for me, but I pay him every day, seven days a week, to go to parties, to hang out at the lobbies of hotel rooms, to go to events that I can't go to. And all he's trained to do, because I'm in the perpetuation business, is he goes to people. And he says, hey, Casey, what do you do? And you say, hey, I got listener.com and I got this one exit, and I got this podcast and I'm marrying Jacqueline. And then he says, oh, what do you like about that? And you list that out. And then he says, what don't you like about it? Because he's hitting what the ways I can provide value.

Yeah.

And then because I'm one of the few people that curated a perpetual database of David Meltzer, which also helps with AI because it can synthesize the perpetual David Meltzer better. But here's the key. All he has to tell the person after, even if he's not listening. Would it help you if I introduce you to Dave Meltzer? Now you're thinking, dave, you can't be introduced to everyone. That's why I'm completely, exponentially alive forever in the perpetual curated David Meltzer database. Because then if you just met my boy and he said, you want to meet David Meltzer, you're going to say three. Three things. A few people will say, I hate that mofo. And then it gives me an opportunity to say why? And try to re engineer it. Yeah, a few people also will say, I love that mofo. Absolutely. I've dreamed of meeting him. The majority of the people, and they say this about the Kardashians too, believe it or not, the majority of people on Earth are going to say, I don't know who David Meltzer is. Who the F is David Meltzer? Well, if you don't have a perpetual strategy in a perpetual David Meltzer database and you can start yours way earlier than me, then that person can go, hey, you know, what's your favorite platform? I like Facebook. I like. It's irrelevant. I like YouTube. Here, here's David Meltzer. Now what am I doing? They're selling for me because I have the. That's what my essence is going to resonate with them. Then I get more and more in each of those. We got time for one last question, my brother.

Yeah, no, I appreciate that. That, A, that makes so much sense, and B, it's just. It's so powerful to. To identify like that last category where you live and you do it the best. Like out of everyone I've ever seen.

Thank you.

Do it the way you do. You do it the best. Last thing is just in the spirit of Moving into the 2024, we got the Super bowl coming soon. You're traveling 200 plus events a year. 200 plus events. If you could leave someone with a better way to get ahead this year when it comes to managing their their time, what would be an action item that you'd leave them with here today?

I got to give two. So the first one is email me david melter.com I will send you an exercise called the Student in the Calendar which will utilize time in a productive, accessible and gracious manner. I am literally one of me and Rob Dyrdek. I don't think anyone studies time more than we do.

That is a good correlation. You and you and Rob Dyrdek for sure. It's true.

And he built an app off of my student in the calendar. Wow. And conversations that we had. And I think so highly of him because he puts an emotional valuation into time. So 1. Email me David Meltzer.com for the student of the Calendar. But if I'm going to give you the best advice, it's honestly, number one, find someone that you can help get to where they want to be and then find someone that can help you get to where you want to be. Live 2024 like this. I want you reaching out to people that are sitting in a situation you want to be in and say, can you help me? And I want to make sure that you find people who want to share your table and say, can I help you? If you live your life like this in 2024, the fastest, easiest, most statistically successful way to get to where you want to be is to find someone and help them get to where they want to be. Or find someone that's where you want to be and ask them for help. I promise you that with the Student of the Calendar you will make more money, help more people and have more fun. In other words, be like Casey Adams.

Dave, thank you so much. Appreciate you. Love you so much.

Can't wait to be his uncle.