David Meltzer - A Masterclass in Coaching, Business, and Doing for Others

Living a life in full is a conversation you always wanted to have with that person who gave an amazing TED Talk or the author of one of your favorite books, or that inspirational Olympian you always wanted to know more about. It's graduate level conversations with those making a difference in the world and in the lives of others. This show brings you new ideas and approaches so that you can live a life in full. I'm your host, Dr. Chris Stout and I hope you enjoy this episode. This episode is brought to you by the new fellowship and certificate programs now being offered by the center for Global Initiatives. As you may know, the center is an all volunteer organization and the same is true for the faculty in these programs. So all the tuition goes to support the work of the center. It has always been our ethos to open source humanitarian intervention and and these programs use the same approach in that all the materials we use are freely available all the time to anyone, everywhere, even if you don't take a course. We have built a world class faculty and contracts with other universities, medical schools and partnered NGOs. There are two fellowship tracks, one for those wishing to start their own nonprofit or non governmental organization and one for those seeking mentorship for career development and advancement in humanitarian work. Our initial certificate programs include humanitarian intervention, social entrepreneurship and global health practice. Please consider taking a world class masterclass with us. Visit alifeinfull.org and click on the CourseWorks tab to learn more. Thanks welcome to another episode of Living a Life in Full. I'm your host, Dr. Chris Stout Show Note the format of this episode with David Metzler is a bit different than most in that David's time was limited to 30 minutes. His assistant noted that 30 minutes with David is about the same as 60 minutes with other guests and I think you may agree after you hear our conversation. So I'm recording this intro after David and I spoke. I hope you enjoy our action packed interview. Today's guest, David Metzler was the CEO of the renowned Lee Steinberg Sports and Entertainment Agency, which is which was the basis of the Tom Cruise movie Jerry Maguire. He is now the co founder with partner and NFL hall of Famer Warren Moon of Sports 1 Marketing, which leverages over $20 billion in relationship capital to market some of the biggest sporting events in the world like the super bowl, The Masters, the NFL's hall of Fame, the Pro bowl, the Kentucky Derby, Breeders cup, and award shows like the Emmys, Oscars and Grammys, and as well as numerous charitable events. David regularly speaks around the globe at some of the world's biggest business, sports, technology and motivational events and as a result he was recognized as one of Forbes top 10 keynote speakers. He's created a value based consulting model that focuses on guaranteed quantitative value which has earned him Marshall Goldsmith's recognition as a top 100 business coach. David's clients includes leaders who are Fortune 100 executives to startup entrepreneurs. In terms of media, he had a starring role in WGN's World's Greatest Motivators. He is the executive producer of Entrepreneurs Number One Digital Business Show Elevator Pitch. And David hosts one of the top entrepreneurial podcasts, the Playbook, which is an engaging mix of exclusive conversations with some of Today's most influential CEOs, sports icons, successful entrepreneurs including Gary Vaynerchuk, Jordan Belford, who's known as the Wolf of Wall Street, Tillman Fertitta, owner of the Houston Rockets, NBA champion Jeremy Lin, former professional racer Danica Patrick, as well as Cameron Diaz. He's often on the other side of the mic as a frequent guest on a number of interview shows as well, such as Bloomberg, espn, Forbes, CNBC and Variety. He's a three time international best selling author and we'll be discussing some of his books and his philosophy. Today. David has been recognized by Variety magazine as their Sports Humanitarian of the Year and he was awarded the Ellis Island Medal of Honor. And now our conversation. David, welcome to the show. It's a treat to have you on.

Thank you for having me, Chris.

You bet. For those that may not know your background as well as I do, I'd like to start with maybe a bit of your origin story. Can you tell us a little bit about your childhood and how it shaped who you are today?

Absolutely. It's funny because I have that sign behind me that money doesn't buy happiness and that's really the relationship that tells my story since I've been very young. I was a child in Akron, Ohio, six kids, a single mom. She worked two jobs, packed their dinner in a paper bag and filled up turnstiles at the Seven Elevens with greeting cards after she taught second grade. But I was extremely happy. In fact, the only time I wasn't happy as a child was when I catch my mom crying over financial stress, food, cars, breaking down, whatever it may be. And in my mind I thought, man, if I could just buy my mom a house in a car, if I could just be rich, then I'd be happy all the time. And so that became what I called my attention and intention. That became my pursuit to make as much money as I can to Be as happy as I can. And, you know, in my journey, what I found was that life reaffirmed that for me. Nine months out of law school, I was a millionaire. I went to the Silk. We sold that company for $3.4 billion in 1995, learned how to raise money, and raised hundreds of millions of dollars in the Silicon valley in the 90s. By 1999, at 31 years old, I was CEO of the world's first smartphone for Samsung and Microsoft, the first Windows C device. And I had everything and I was happy. Everything up until that point in my life reaffirmed that money bought happiness. And so I was raised with an energy, a currency for me, was driven by, you know, I could buy what I needed, I could buy more than I needed. I could buy happiness, I could buy love. And I did buy my mom a house in a car. And that reaffirmed the same.

And then you also, though, there was sort of a turn in that story as well too, where you had some additional economic hardship that you've written about in your books.

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, that journey, what I learned in my journey was you did not buy happiness. And I. And that's why I have that sign behind me that says money doesn't buy happiness, but what it does do is it allows you to shop. And the lessons that I had to learn, you know, I believe pain is an indicator. It's an indicator that you have lessons to learn. Mental, physical, financial, emotional pain, spiritual pain, all just indicating that you have a better direction to go. And so I went ahead and learned my lessons and I learned that money doesn't buy love or happiness, but it allows you to shop. And I had some lessons to learn on what to shop for and how to shop in order to be happy.

That's good. I'm not going to give any spoilers because I certainly, I want to go into your books in just a few questions, but, you know, I think you've really kind of walked the talk of that in terms of how you've demonstrated that in your life and what you've been able to do. I know today you really, with your consultancy and with your current work, working with entrepreneurs and startups and stuff, that, that you've got a variety of tools and things available to people. But I guess my question to maybe start off with the current affairs that we're all dealing with with COVID 19, you know, you've been steeped in the last few years working with public relations and managing and adapting with sports teams and with sports Venues. How is Covid impacting the work that you do and what are your thoughts about this currently?

You know, it's funny because a lot of people talk about this being such uncertain times. And in my life I always tell people, gosh, if you could tell me what's going to happen tomorrow, I'll teach us both how to make billions of dollars.

Good point.

The future is always uncertain. What makes these times interesting as they were in 93, 97, 2001, 2008 in my life. And in 2008 I lost over $100 million. So significant change. And with great change comes great opportunity. And so what I help people do and then to have my own business is to look at what I do have control of. And the first thing that I look for is to control my mindset. I have extreme superpower of finding the light, the love and the lessons in everything, and teaching other people and empowering them to find through gratitude, the light, the love and the lessons and everything. And then moving that to mindset, to heartset, how do I feel about it, right? I have complete control of how I feel. And teaching people to practice ending fear is a key component in order to effectuate taking advantage or having huge opportunity from huge accelerated growth. And so how we feel is determined upon four things. One, how aware are we of the needs of the ego, the primary and secondary needs of the ego, the primary and secondary fears that exist in our life that create interference, create void shortages and obstacles to the great light, love and lessons that were always created and connected to. And so the first thing of being aware is to know the needs of that ego based consciousness that needs to be right, offended, separate, inferior, superior, anxious, frustrated, angry, resentful. All of these different needs of the ego cause us to waste time, resources and money. In fact, if anyone listening goes back and just figures out how much time, money, resources that they have lost, just being worried, you could double the amount of income you make right today with all of that money and resource. So the first thing of being aware of how we feel and then second, stopping. The problem with ego based consciousness is not only does it create interferences, avoid shortages and obstacles, interference and corrosion between the great source of power, light and love and source energy that we're connected to, but it actually sends in the wrong trajectory, accelerates us in the wrong trajectory. So the best thing to do if you're moving at a high pace in the wrong direction is to stop and figure out which way to go. And so I tell people all the time to stop and then Drop be a Buddha. So it takes a ferocious person to stop. It takes a Buddha to drop down to center, to find your higher frequency neutrality, to get back into the flow, to not allow that interference, to use your free will to create a great flow for yourself and then be ferocious again and roll in the right direction when you experience pain. That indicator that you have a lesson to learn. When you drop into that fear based consciousness, your mind, body, soul are on fire. When you're on fire, you got to stop, drop and roll. And if you do that, you will gain a tremendous amount in your life by always moving in the right trajectory. So during these compressed times of uncertainty, during these extraordinary changing times, there's been more change in the last four months than any other period. What I say is take control of your mindset, then can take control of your heart set. Then you'll be able to think, say and do and believe all the right things.

Wow. Yeah. And again, I think you are so genuine when you talk about this because I've read some of your work and I've seen you be interviewed and seen you do interviews and watch some of your trainings and that's very much sort of the unifying thread through a lot of the fabric of what you talk about. And it strikes me too as being very much, I don't know if it's informed by, but it certainly is very similar to a stoic philosophy. Like, you know, Ryan Holiday talks about this a lot. You know, ego is the enemy and even cognitive behavioral therapy in terms of having that choice of being able to make a decision of, you know, mindset. So I really appreciate that because I think during these chaotic times, like you said, you just listed off a litany, you know, of in the last 20 years of where these kinds of things have happened and that you've been able to be adaptive to those things and I would dare say maybe even come out all stronger for it. So I think that's really quite an impressive track record that takes it from the philosophical to the actionable.

Yeah, it's so important to understand that because there's three things that materialize our imagination. And so number one is knowing your what. Most people look for their why and they use their why as an excuse not to get their what. And so I utilize five daily practices to figure out my what. And the first is to take inventory of my values, personal, experiential, giving and receiving, that I use to figure out my what. Because if I can figure out my what, I can go from nothing into a possibility and Then if I can figure out my what and become inspired to enjoy the consistent, persistent pursuit of our potential, then I could take that possibility and have a mathematical advantage over that by having a probability. And then through the materialization of that probability into perspective or reality. I use strategy, discipline and awareness in order to materialize. Just like a 3D printer, right? Materialize what my dreams are. And imagination is from possibility to probability, probability to perspective. That's how we manifest or materialize what we want.

That's great. Well, that's probably a good segue in. I want to start with your most recent best selling book, Game Time Decision Making High Scoring Business strategies from the biggest names in sports. Now for those that aren't familiar with this book, we'll put information about it in the show notes and how people can get a hold of it. But you had Tillman Fertitta, chairman and CEO of Landry's, owner of the Golden Nugget casinos and NBA's Houston Rockets. He wrote the Forward and I just want to take a second to give a quote and what he said in that forward, he said, no matter what game you're playing, teaching others to make the right decisions is even more important for leaders. If you can equip others with the ability to make informed and well reasoned calls, your impact is scalable. This is the core of David's approach to game time decision making. To empower you and those around you with the awareness and ability to make the right call when the game is on the line and the pressure is high. So you know, I love your whole book is kind of done via a sports metaphor, in particular football. As a writer, what, what chose you to use that as a, as a vehicle to communicate your ideas and techniques?

Yeah. So game time decision making is about being happy. Right. My mission in life is to empower over a billion people to be happy. And so what I decided was with my SP background and all the great stories that I had, because people learn lessons best through stories because it allows for an emotional connection, a different part of the brain is utilized when we listen to stories. And so what I did was take the 10 best lessons that I knew in the decisions that need to be made of how to make those decisions to be happy and create, number one, a pre game analysis by telling people, hey, here's the lesson that's going to help you make the best decisions to be happy. And then use sports stories and entertainment stories in order to effectuate and show and illustrate those lessons. And then do a post game analysis to remind people hey, considering this story about these extraordinary people, here's the lesson that we want to take away. So game time. Decision making is about lessons in order to make the right decisions in order to be happy. And more importantly, as Tillman refers to, to empower others. To empower others to be happy. When I have told people I want to empower over a billion people to be happ, they think I'm actually crazy. Of course, like any other great idea that I've had, people laugh at me, scoff at me, make fun of me at first. But when I break it down to them and tell them, you know, I'm just looking for a thousand people in my lifetime, a thousand people like Chris that can empower a thousand people. To empower a thousand people a thousand times a thousand. To million. A million times a thousand. A billion. I can create a collective consciousness with the greatest, most contagious virus of all time called happiness. A virus that spreads simply by. By witnessing it. A virus that makes anyone that witnesses it happy. And that virus also strengthen us emotionally, physically, spiritually, mentally and financially. It actually strengthens our immune system, so it protects us against other viruses too, that might be damaging to ourselves. So I think Tillman is doing a great justice to telling how, utilizing sports and the stories of sports to teach the lessons of decision making in order to ultimately meet my mission, which is to create a collective consciousness of happiness in order to change the world.

I so love that. I know that you're active in a variety of different kinds of humanitarian pursuits, which really resonates with me because that's kind of my current day job is running a nonprofit in global health and international work. And I think it's really cool. You've, I think, correct me if I have my facts wrong, but I believe on your 50th birthday you threw 50 fundraising parties to build leadership centers in Africa. Could you maybe spend a few minutes and just deconstruct that process? Because honestly, David, I have the hardest time, like seeking donations and that sort of a thing. So what was the genesis behind this and how did it turn out?

Well, I'm the chairman of the Unstoppable foundation, and we built villages in Africa with five pillars to empower them to take care of their own education, water, health care, financial literacy, etc. And you know, understanding money doesn't buy happiness. But if you shop for the right things, that can make you happy. I decided for my 50th birthday to be inspired by the found Cynthia Kersey of the Unstoppable foundation. Who had her 50th birthday 10 years earlier, created a birthday party, one party, to fund the foundation, which now impacts millions of people around the world and has grown and grown and grown. So I decided, which I thought would be a lot easier than it was half the time, my wife teases me. She goes, you just should have written a check. But I decided at that time it was very easy. And I was traveling the world. I speak around the world to empower other people. As a chancellor of Junior Achievement University, as a keynote speaker around the world to empower people, and as the chairman of Unstoppable, I decided that I would mirror my travels and throw one birthday party a week in some place that I was at. And I will tell you, it was the most giving thing I've ever done. Not monetarily, although we raised millions of dollars, but emotionally, physically, spiritually. I don't know if you guys all get as excited as I do at birthday parties, but to do that every week, it takes a lot out of you. And I was so grateful. It was so exciting how many people rallied around me and building these community centers to tie all the generations so that not only were the younger people learning about technology and tourism and auto mechanics and engineering and all these great tools, but they weren't losing their culture, because we now had community centers where the most valuable situational knowledge, not just experiential training and skills and knowledge were being passed through, but the shared knowledge from generation to generation was extraordinary. And so probably still to this day, when people say, what's the best thing you've ever bought? It wasn't the Ferraris, the ski mountain, or the golf courses, or any of the properties or any of the things I bought that I didn't need to impress people I didn't like. By far the best things I've ever bought were these community centers in Africa.

That's great. Well, it certainly, I think, then circles back to speaking to your wanting to make a billion people happy, you know, and just think about the work that everybody's been involved with in those kinds of centers. And then they go out and do what good work that inspires other people. They go out and do good work. So it's really a, you know, teach a person to fish kind of aspect with it as well. That's. I tip my hat to you, my friend. That is. That is very impressive.

Thank you.

So I want to wind up our conversation talking about your coaching work, because I think that's actually one of the ways that I first, you know, came in contact with, with you, your writing, your background, your history. You have a very popular entity called Friday Trainings. And for listeners who aren't yet familiar with it, can you talk about what Friday Trainings is all about? How they work and what reason for starting them was?

Yeah, so I started it over 20 years ago, only training what I knew, which was sales. And I wanted to teach a five to thrive system, how to stimulate interest, transition interest, share a vision, manage and develop that vision so you'll thrive and be happy. That has evolved over the last 20 years into thousands and thousands of people. Every Friday, joining me with a Road to Revenue and Happiness series. Everything from toughness to telephone, ultimate ego training, sales training, pitch training, all types of great training. Q and A. I have once a month at least the byoq. You bring the questions, I'll bring the answers. But my main objective is to help empower others. To empower others to be happy. To empower over a billion people to be happy with the Road to Revenue series. So every single Friday for free, I give this training and you can reach out to me directly@davidmeltzer.com I give free exercises and guides. I have a free online training as well and I actually get my books for free as well. So if you reach out to me@davidmeltzer.com or just join my text community at 949.298.2905, you can join what is a great community of people that are more interested than interesting and are trying to empower others. To empower others to be happy.

That's great. We'll put that in the show notes as well. I'm particularly a fan of your Q and A because man, it really as you alluded to and I'm here to testify to that, the questions are very broad based. I mean they seem to come from people that are maybe just in the formational, foundational, got an idea, have an itch they want to scratch and see if it really could turn into a business to people that are a little bit more fully fledged and looking to advance their work. So I think it's really kind of a nice experiential thing to kind of hear from a master that's been through the ups and downs and the backs of and forths with doing this kind of work. They're all available on YouTube as well too, right? And your website that people can go back and take a look at them.

They're actually featured on Spotify and Entrepreneur. The Playbook is my podcast, so it's the most popular, downloaded podcast that they have and we have is the trainings themselves. More than the Cameron Diaz's and Dan Aykroyd's and Ray Lewis's of the world, all the great celebrities, entertainers and athletes that are on the playbook as well. The trainings seem to be the most popular, probably because of the input and the asset and resource of being able to answer so many different questions. I always joke around, if I told all of my listeners that I'd pay your taxes, state and federal taxes, we'd have the biggest following in the world. And yet I am offering to pay the greatest and most expensive tax you're going to pay, which is let me pay your dummy tax. I paid a lot of it. So if you want Dave Meltzer to pay your taxes, the most expensive tax you have, stuff, come see me, come join me. Dave Meltzer will pay your dummy tax for you.

That's great. That's great. Well, you know, you know a lot about coaching from, you know, athletics and, and the whole aspect of that part of your career. You know about coaching from the work that you do with, with entrepreneurs and established business leaders and people of all stripe. What's, what's the difference between or, or is there a difference? How do you distinguish between a good coach or a good mentor? Or how could someone find the difference of that? You know, does, does someone say, hey, I need to go hire me a coach or I need to go find a mentor? Or how do you and you know, intellectually separate those two if, if you do it all?

I don't at all. You know, for me, the key component is finding someone in the situation that you want to be in. So a good mentor or coach is someone that sits in this situation that you want to be in. And if you know your why, you'll be able to ask them one to give you that what? Or teach you to get that what. And now if there's a quantitative value to that, then it could be a paid arrangement. So, you know, in essence, mentors can be free or paid. I would not pay and I don't pay my mentors or coaches unless they guarantee quantitative value of profit. And I do the same thing in my business where I have free training, coaching, exercise guides and books. I have a private group as well. But anytime I collect money is only month to month and guaranteed to be a profit center for you, which then becomes giving in my mind. If I can guarantee you, If I collect $50,000 for you to coach you in a month, but you make 100,000, can you see any reason you wouldn't want me to coach you or mentor you or would you care what I called it? I don't think so. And that's the key to any business relationship is are you living in what I call the 120 realm where you're providing $100 worth of value and only asking for 20. That takes giving and receiving, making them one.

So how, how are those metrics? Like would you consult with someone that's. I can't. You know, a startup would probably have a difficult time, you know, being able to afford that kind of a consulting fee. So are they more established C suite folks that come for the, the five figure coaching gigs or, or, and like.

Yeah, so I, I have a variety of opportunities so to fit everyone. So you know, majority of the people just are free. Right. And that's my main mission. But some people require more time and attention and so variety of ranges occur in services solutions where I can provide a profit center for the startups, the entrepreneurs, the students even and still, you know, as little as $25 a month. It's very hard to be, not be a profit setter for someone and give one on one access in a group setting that I provide or all the way up to $50,000 a month in a corporate setting to be a business advisor. But the interesting thing in me doing it, whether it's $25 a month, whether it's free, which is a really low Bar, or $50,000 a month and I have everything in between as a range. My thing is I only work month to month and I guarantee profit so I mitigate all risk for anyone. So as long as somebody is aligned with what I'm teaching, they can't see any reason not to work with me. Choosey falls on the other side that I want to make sure that, that I have the time, resources in order to one, guarantee the profitability and two, effectuate what they're trying to do.

Do you vet your potential students or prodigy? Do they like to like if someone just has sort of maybe a cockamamie kind of idea, you just go, you know, I'm not going to be able to, you know, have this idea, be able to, you know, pay back in spades because it really needs some work or they need to pivot and do something different. How, what's the kind of the initiation process that you would go through to select something, someone they've obviously reached out to you and selected you. Does the vetting go the other direction as well?

Well, that's why I Have the private group setting which is, you know, $25 a month, so that, you know, I have any. Anyone that's serious is going to be able to go ahead and work with me at that level. And as we build up, I then can move them into some one on one, private one on one access as I build them and help them scale and develop. And there's also some networking, you know, so I love the fact that everybody starts in free, moves to a $25 setting and then from there we grow together and we guarantee success for each other.

That's great. Yeah, it's. I think it helps people kind of move off that perspective of ambivalence to say, you know, what, what are the reasons? What are the barriers? What would stop me from doing this? If there's potential in my idea and if I'm sincere about it and have the energy and whatever, the grit, the gumption to be able to do that, that you provide a vehicle and a way to do that. And people can also kind of take you for a test drive and be able to read your work through your books, be able to see what you've done through Entrepreneur magazine and through the other places that you publish as well as publishing on YouTube and media with your interviews as both a guest and as a host. So. So I want to circle back to making a billion people happy. I think that, you know, one of the things I've been impressed with you with, David, is that you've got a variety of different tools. I don't know if it's a toolkit or a Swiss army knife or what, but you are able to reach out to people in a variety of different kinds of ways and, you know, kind of hit them wherever they are in their journey. You're able to provide, you know, some people like to read a book and, and write in the margins and think about it and have ideas. Other people like to consume audio or watch a video or see you dual screen with Cameron Diaz or something like that. So I think you're well on your way to. There should be some little David Meter of how close are we already to a billion? Because my suspicion is that you're probably already have moved the needle on that count. I really think that you've got an impressive approach to how you go about doing this.

You know, so interesting is that I have learned one great lesson. It's a great place to finish with, right? Is that how do you blend persistence with patience and how do you detach your emotions from an outcome? The old and younger David Meltzer would be so concerned about that meter and where my primary focus is always on enjoying the consistent every day persistent without quit pursuit of that measure and when I keep my focus on the pursuit of that measure and keep practicing all the skills that are necessary in developing those all the knowledge of what I want and who can help me as well as my desire to keep on increasing the productivity, the accessibility and gratitude that I have in all the activity I get paid for, all the activity I don't get paid for and finding the light, the love and the lessons there within and that's the main objective and lesson that I've learned in my life to detach my emotions from that outcome and focus it in on the aforementioned and it really has worked out and therefore resistance, therefore more people are empowered, therefore let others keep the count. I'm just going to keep moving on.

I like that approach. I agree. I think that is a brilliant way to end today. So David, I just, I want to thank you for being so generous with your time. I know you've got like 50 things going on, you know, at any point in time. I want to also thank you for your work and making everything that you do so available to people and easy, easy to reach out. As I mentioned, we'll put all the contact information that you've mentioned and I have a few other little, you know, gold nuggets that I love of your work that I'm a personal fan of that I will also put into the show notes. So so thank you so much for your time. Looking forward to what's coming next and really appreciate you having being on the show today.

Thank you so much. Be kind to your future self and do good deeds. I'll see you soon. Thank you.

Living Life in Full is a pretty of Stout Media, a subsidiary of Gordian Knot, LLC assistant producer Gracie Wong Music Dan O' Brien executive producer and host Dr. Chris Stout to learn more, stop by our website at lifeinfull for show notes and please recommend us to your friends and subscribe on your favorite platform. And as for the obligatory disclaimer, this podcast is for general information uses only and is not constitute the practice of psychology, medicine, nutrition or other professional health care services, including the giving of medical or psychological advice. No doctor patient relationship is formed. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I take conflicts of interest seriously. For all of my disclosures as well as show notes, please see livingalifeinfull.org podcast and my LinkedIn profile. Thanks and until next time,