David Meltzer ON: Making 1 Billion People Happy

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Welcome to the Life on Purpose podcast. It's your host, James Laughlin. I'm incredibly excited to welcome in this week's guest, David Meltzer. Here's a little bit about David. David is the co founder of Sports One Marketing and formerly served as CEO of the renowned Lee Steinberg Sports and Entertainment Agency, which was actually the inspiration for the movie Jerry Maguire. His life's mission. Listen to this. To empower over 1 billion people to be happy. This simple yet powerful mission has led him on an incredible journey to provide one thing, value in all his content and communication. That's exactly what you'll receive as part of that mission. For the last 20 years he's been providing free weekly trainings to empower others to be happy. So he's empowering people to to empower other people to be happy. He's an incredible individual, highly successful, very driven and very heart centered. So a massive welcome David. Welcome to the show.

How can I not be here when the title of this podcast is exactly what I live for in that consistent, persistent pursuit of my potential. A life of purpose, passion and profitability. It's awesome.

I love what you do. You give so much away. That's how I connected with you. It was through Gary V. And a few others. I seen what you were doing and I and these guys were promoting that. You're just incredibly giving and you're all about inspiring a billion people to be happy right over.

Don't limit me, man. Over a billion people. I'm going to create a collective consciousness of happiness. Happy World is going to be a healthy world, it's going to be a wealthy world and a wise world.

I absolutely love that. We need more of that and I have a few questions for you around that. So in terms of where you've got to, what would you say has been what one of your toughest lessons that you've had to learn from in life?

You know, for me, the greatest lesson that I've learned and it was the toughest Lesson was practice sending fear to ask for help. Radical humility is still the greatest lesson and the most difficult lesson to learn because everyone has an ego. In fact, if I could do one invention in the world, it would be an egoectomy that removes the need to be right, offended, separate, inferior, superior, anxious, frustrated, angry, guilty, resentful out of people, let alone the primal fears of flee, fight, you know, food and the other F word. But if I could remove the ego from myself and understand that I don't live in a world as a victim. There aren't gatekeepers, there aren't attacks or judgments against me. I don't live in a world, even for me, in a positive world where I'm buying things I don't need to impress people I don't like, still separate myself and others. Even though I'm giving to receiving, unfortunately it ends up to be a negotiation or a trade. What I intend to do in the difficult challenge of being radically humble is to understand that I start from nowhere. I am now here, but eventually I will be nowhere again. And in other words, I live my life to give it away. And in order to give the most away, I need help. And to ask for help is the most difficult and challenging and humbling thing that I can do in my journey.

That's beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. And you mentioned there about asking for help and looking to others and collaborating. So could I ask you who would be one of your role models, your mentor, somebody that you look up to who's living on the planet Earth right now that you go, wow, I love what they do and I love how they carry themselves.

Yeah, so there's several people, because I look for people that are in the situation that I want to be in. And so for that matter, Bob Proctor and his understanding and relationship to money is a mentor of mine. Deepak Chopra and his understanding of the embodiment and the spiritual journey that we're taking as human existences. So he's absolutely a terrific mentor and I'm blessed to have learned so much from both of those. And then I still learn from guys like Dennis Waitley and Brian Tracy, the legends in sales. I still am always sharpening my sword of sales technique. If I could teach people to share a vision in an abundant way. And they were kind of the legends, the innovators of the Think and Grow Rich crew, along with Bob Proctor, but really sales oriented. Dennis Waitley and Brian Tracy on how to be abundant and consultative when we're sharing a vision without any resistance, void shortages or obstacles.

I love that that's amazing. And if you think about investments, because we're all making investments every day when we wake up. We invest in our health, we invest in our time with our relationships. What's been one of the greatest, most impactful investments you've made in your own growth?

Taking inventory of my values has been a great investment, but I think the biggest investment to me is my health. One of the biggest mistakes that I've made. And it came to me years ago. I was on a panel and it was an extraordinary pan. The executives from Burger King, from hbo, from mtv. And, you know, we were with freshmen at my law school, Tulane University, and we were all giving advice, and the question came up, what's the best piece of advice that you can give? And everyone had, you know, school advice and work advice. And the woman from hbo, she gave this advice and it just hit me in the chest like, you should be taking that advice. And she said, you need to find one thing for your health, exercise that you love to do for an hour a day for the rest of your life. You need to first and foremost, put your health first, not your family, not the activity you get paid for, your health first. And so my greatest investment is I spend a minimum of one hour a day on my health, and I have for over two and a half years. I put my family second, although I do make an investment in myself by a minimum of 30 minutes with my wife, minimum of 30 minutes with my son, minimum of two minutes with my three teenage daughters, and a minimum of one minute a day with my mom. And then I spend a minimum of 10 minutes a day studying. A minimum. Is that you notice I like minimums because they don't limit. But for me, without a doubt, the best investment everyone can make is find something that's good for you, healthy for you, fitness wise, that you can do a minimum of an hour a day for the rest of your life. You'll thank me for making that investment.

That's amazing. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you so much. And you talked about your family. I want to talk a bit more about family because a big part of my purpose is to try and help dads and moms, but to help them be more present and to help them be more intentional, help guide the direction of their kids. And, you know, here in New Zealand, we have the highest teenage suicide rate on the planet. And so I feel like dads have a really amazing opportunity to step in and help change the direction and help kids find a purpose, but also help them realize how the mind Works. So what advice would you have for a young mom or young dad out there who's trying to help their children take control of their own mindset?

It's so beautiful because you mentioned it in there about our thoughts. And I learned a great lesson about purpose. Our purpose is to have purposeful thoughts. And so as parents, what we want to do is help our children, empower our children to have purposeful thoughts. If they have purposeful thoughts, it'll relieve them of the unhappiness, the separation, the anxiety, the fear, the suicidal thoughts that they may have. Purposeful thoughts cannot reconcile themselves with judgments, conditions, and fear. When we have purposeful thoughts, what that means is we now are in the pursuit of something. If you have a purpose, you then are pursuing something. And the greatest thing about pursuit is that there's a famous friend of mine, his name is Chris Gardner, and he wrote a book called the Pursuit of Happiness. And Will Smith starred in this movie. And I always joke around with Chris Gardner. I said, you blew it, man. He said, what are you talking about? I said, you named the movie the wrong name. He said, what's that? I said, it should have been Happiness is the pursuit. Yes. And so what we want to do is teach our children to pursue things. And in order to teach them to pursue things things, we have to teach them how to have purposeful thoughts. And that comes with values like gratitude, forgiveness, and accountability, with a great keen sense of kindness. I have a suicidal remedy. I'm not a professional. And if anyone feels as if they want to take their own lives, go seek a professional. But I do have some of my own home remedies for anxiety, fear, depression, and that's doing good deeds. Kindness is a cure. Happiness itself is a virus. It's the strongest virus that exists. It's spread. You couldn't even wear a hazmat suit and stop happiness, because if you just witness happiness and it spreads, it's the only virus that spreads by. You could watch a TV show 100,000 miles from here and you could spread happiness. So it's impossible to stop. It strengthens you mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally, even financially. And the best part about it, it strengthens your immune system. So not only does it make you happy and strengthen you, but it protects you against all other diseases. There's nothing better than happiness. And purposeful thoughts will create purpose, which will create happiness for purpose, fulfillment, passion and purpose. And guess what? Profitability as well, which makes it even easier to have purpose and passion.

Wow, that is mind blowing. Absolutely mind blowing. I love that. Thank you. And if you think about your kids. So how do you want to be remembered as a dad?

Wow. You know, I get choked up when I think about it, but we just talked about kindness. You know, I want my kids not to listen to me. They watch me. And I want them to learn kindness. I want. I want them to learn the definition and what entails being kind. You need to be gracious, to be kind. You need to be forgiving, to be kind. You need to be accountable, to be kind and inspirational. And, you know, I teach my kids all the time. I said, look, I just need to. Three things I can ask you in all your activities. One, did you do your best? I want you to pursue your potential. Every single thing you're doing, from taking the trash out to sports to school, did you do your best? Whatever that quantum being is, are you searching and pursuing your potential? Two, what lessons did you learn? I want you to take away from all the things you're doing, the lessons that allow you to move an angle towards something better and end up somewhere better than that. And then finally, did you have fun? Could you find the light, the love, and the lessons in what you're doing, whatever it is. And if I can ingrain those three things into my children, then I know that I'll be satisfied as a parent and know the four things that I need to know about my kids. Those are the three things I want them to do. The four things I need to know are, number one, I need them to be healthy so that my job is to make sure I teach them to be healthy. And two, I need to empower them to be happy. Three, I want them to love me. And four, appreciate me, meaning recognize or acknowledge or remember that I bring value to them. And I want them to recognize, acknowledge, and remember the value that I bring so they can bring that to other people as well, allowing it to come through me. So if I know all four of my children, my legacy will be my children. And if they are happy and healthy, love me and appreciate me towards infinity, I would have done my job.

That's incredible. I love your absolute conviction and your clarity around who you are as a dad, who you're living into each and every day. That's powerful, David.

Yeah. You know, practice. So I wasn't this way 15 years ago, and I've done a lot of work in order to create the clarity, balance, and focus in my life, to create confidence in what I do, and to continually know one thing. That, number one rule. Number six, never take yourself seriously. But Also take inventory of who you are every day. Your personal values, your experiential values, your giving values, what value you want to give and receiving values. You can't give what you don't receive. So I receive first to come through me for others. I don't give to receive. I receive so I can give. But if you take inventory of those values which I previously mentioned, and then not be afraid of being a hypocrite, you know, one of the radically humble things I've learned is I don't know what I don't know. And it seems to me as I get older, the more that I do learn, the less I know. So it just opens up a whole nother quagmire of information that I have no clue about, which then creates more radical humility. So I tell people all the time, take inventory of your values every day, but don't be afraid of being a hypocrite and saying you didn't know what you didn't know. I changed my mind. I was wrong.

That's amazing. I love it. Every kid needs to hear that as well. Hear adults saying that. That's amazing.

Absolutely.

For those who are entrepreneurial and particular, you know, young people starting out in a path or say, young parent, and they want to provide certainty and security for their family, what advice would you have to them to build a business that is profitable? So we've got the mindset of gratitude and the mindset of abundance. But what are some of the things you would suggest on the daily that they could be doing to start moving that needle forward?

Well, one, detach your emotions from the outcome and use math instead to get to where you want to be. And one of the greatest math lessons that we can utilize as entrepreneurs is to make sure we're in business tomorrow. A lot of people don't do the math and they don't realize that the heartbeat of a business is money. And that as long as you just like your body, as long as your heart is beating, you can do anything. Anything could happen tomorrow. All it takes is one touch of favor. And I've seen so many businesses evolve. They've grown, accelerated, expanded. And as long as people stay in business every day and make sure that's their primary goal, then they're allowing the growth, expansion, compound interest to occur. And if you can detach your outcomes from your emotions, from that outcome will actually come faster. So my philosophy in business is, I'm happy where I'm at. I'm at the right place at the perfect time. I will plan to angle to where I want to be. But make sure that I'm in business today and tomorrow. And most importantly, I have faith. That faith allows me to do everything in my potential, everything to enjoy the consistent, persistent pursuit of that potential. And have faith that not only am I where I'm at and angling towards what I want, but I'm going to end up somewhere better. And if you can have that faith, you will stay in business. You won't utilize. The number one reason that people don't succeed is that they see pain as a stop sign and they quit. Pain is just an indicator. It's a turn signal. It's telling you you have lessons to learn to get to a better place or a better situation or to make your situation better. So please don't stop, don't quit. Allow yourself to be successful by staying in business and angling towards what you want and having faith that you'll end up somewhere better. Remember, the most common denominator of all successful people is that they have a desire that they must be what they can be.

That's beautiful. Beautiful. Thank you. And one last question, David. What are you most excited for in your own life for 2021?

Well, I created a new TV show. So I've done trainings for over 20 years for free. Whether you're in New Zealand or Sydney or China, people join me. Over 20,000 people register every Friday for free trainings. Hundreds of thousands, now even millions. Watch the reruns on Spotify Entrepreneur. The Playbook is the podcast. So share that. And like that. I have a TV show called Elevator Pitch, which you may have seen there in six seasons now in New Zealand. But 2021, I'm launching my own TV show on Bloomberg Television and Amazon prime, available worldwide, called Two Minute Drill. And it's the first real pitch show because we give $50,000 of cash and prizes for the best pitch. No funding, no BS pitches about what the valuations are and what due diligence are. If anyone's been an entrepreneur, you ain't getting funded in 30 seconds or a minute or 10 minutes. We all know that. So. But what you do do is pitch. So we got some of the world's greatest. We got the founder of Uber, the founder of LinkedIn, myself, giving advice to real entrepreneurs, pitching their ideas. And it's an extraordinary show. It'll air in January 8th on Bloomberg Television and in January on Amazon Prime. So catch two Minute Drill, catch my podcast, the Playbook.

David, thank you so much. That's amazing. What a mission you have and I'm here to support you. I'll be spreading the word and I want to thank you for being a personal inspiration. I'm so honored to get to connect with you here on the podcast.

It's my pleasure and thank you for living with such purpose. Please invite me back again.

Well a massive thank you David. I really appreciate you taking the time to connect. It's been an amazing, amazing time getting to know you and learning more about your mission. For those of you who are listening today and would like to follow David, please do so. Go and follow him on Instagram and as as soon surname is spelt M E L T Z E R. Also feel free to join in his weekly training. He's also got a book that he's recently published. He's published many books but please do go and check out his amazing work. He's on a mission to help this world become a happier place. Thank you for tuning in to the Life On Purpose podcast.