448: How to ASK your way to your goals with David Meltzer

Hi, everyone. I'm so happy you've tuned into the show. Whether you have listened before or you're brand new, I'm so grateful for you. You have no idea. And this episode is brought to you by my Become Aligned course. And podcasts are amazing. And I know that you know that because you guys all listen to them, and I do, too. And sometimes they are not necessarily enough because while we're listening, sometimes we're passively listening and we're not actively listening. So the reason that Chris and I. Chris is my husband. The reason we've created this course is because we get asked so many questions outside of the podcast on how we started living the life that we live now. A life of happiness, of abundance, of really understanding that life is always full of problems every single day, but there's always a solution. And how do we shift back into a mindset that's going to keep us happy, keep us together, keep us successful, and keep us in thriving relationships? And that is what our, our Become Aligned course is about. You guys, we cover everything from mindset to the rituals that we do every single day. We talk about different energy sources that's really gonna provide you with lasting energy. We talk about your purpose and what that actually means, what it is and how it's ever changing. We're gonna tap into your beliefs, we're gonna show you how to build a tribe to support where you're going. And we're definitely going to talk about wealth, abundance, money, all of the good things, and how to sustain all of this. Because while, like I said, POD are absolutely awesome, you don't necessarily sit down and actually write out a plan for yourself. Because as much as I can sit here and tell you on the podcast, what we do and how much, how many different people that I can interview, it's important that you actually learn how to apply these things in your own life. So if you've been listening for a while and you are ready to go deeper and you really want to get some direct training and be able to dive into your life and yourself and your mindset, this is the course for you. I don't know about you, but I absolutely have points in my life where I don't know where I'm going. I don't know what I'm doing. Sometimes I hit walls where I don't necessarily feel happy anymore, and I haven't sat with myself long enough. I haven't really let myself think. I haven't written out how I actually feel. And so many people who took this course said that it was completely life changing and they revealed a lot of things about themselves, about them, about their. About their relationships that they weren't really looking at or they were avoiding. And it's about having those tough conversations, not only with other people, but really with yourself and knowing that you have the tools and the access to the tools. And we're going to teach you all of the tools that you need not only to move through things, but to actually thrive on the other side. So, you guys, I would love for you to join the aligned community. It's such a special group of human beings and you get lifetime time access. This is nine different modules where you're going to be working through each area of your life at your own pace. So you might need something on abundance, you might need more on, you know, money, you might need more on your purpose on your tribe. This is where you can really go deep on exactly what you need and make sure that you're not missing any of your blind spots. If you are feeling stuck or if you are wondering how everyone is doing it and how they're managing it all. This is a truly honest course about how to have a thriving life and manage and deal with all of the different problems that do come up in your life and understand that not everyone is going to support you and not everyone is for you and you are not for everyone. And that's okay. It's finding your people. It's forgiving yourself. It's creating a life of abundance and choosing your own purpose and your happiness. So, you guys, you can go to becomealigned.com that's becomealigned.com and you guys know that because you're listeners, I'm going to give you an awesome deal and an awesome discount and I cannot wait to see you in that community. And also let me know if you join because it is such an awesome, awesome community. And also I'm really proud of this course. Chris and I poured our heart and our soul into this. Everything that we've done, everything that we've learned, we've invested so much into ourself that this is everything that we have applied in our lives. And if you want to know how we've done it, we put it all on the table. We've put it all in this course. So if you want to know, go check it out@becealigned.com so let's get into the show.

I asked my wife, who's pregnant with our fourth child. We have three kids at the time, none of them over the age of 10. And I said, is this okay? I'm going to give this money from our first paycheck for someone else. And she looked at me and said, you finally get it.

Welcome to the earn your happy podcast. I'm Lori Harder, founder of The Bliss Project, 3 Time Fitness World champion, fitness expert and cover model, turned self love junkie, lifestyle entrepreneur and author. Each week I'll bring you a guest or a thought that will help you bust through your fears, connect to your soul and get focused and clear so you can elevate your life, business and relationships. We don't wait until we're ready for someone to tell us we're good enough. We take what we want and we anoint ourselves, get ready to earn, own and unapologetically rock your happiness every single day. Are you with me? Here we go. Hey everyone. Thank you so much for tuning into the show. My guest today is Dave Meltzer. He is the CEO of SportsOne Marketing, a Forbes Top 10 keynote speaker, award winning humanitarian, and two time national best selling author. With 25 years of experience as an entrepreneur and executive in the legal, technology, sports and entertainment fields, with expertise across many industries, he is uniquely positioned as a world renowned thought leader, business strategist and leading humanitarian. Dave has created a platform that allows him to communicate with everyone from college students to C suite executives by using his principles for business and life, which are gratitude, empathy, accountability and effective communication. Utilizing these four principles every day allows Dave to live by his mission, which is make a lot of money, help a lot of people and have a lot of fun. And I gained so much wisdom from this podcast. I'm telling you, if you are having an idea of starting a business, if you have a business, if you have an idea, if you have a pulse, you're going to love this podcast. So let's get started. David, I'm so excited to sit down with you and get to chat with you. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Oh, I am so, so excited to speak with you and thank you for taking the time.

Oh, you ha.

I.

You're one of those people who I sit down and I'm like, I. Okay, I have about an hour where I even begin because your story, it's like, do I start with the now, Do I start with the past, do we start with the middle? Because you have such a rich story. So I do think it's really important for the people who may not know who you are yet just to get a feel for. I know you had a really quick rise or you had a beautiful Rise to success. But then you've also had some beautiful big failures that have brought you to a place where, I know now you're doing such beautiful things in the world. So if you could give us a quick synopsis.

Yeah, you know, blessed to grow up with an amazing, amazing mom. Six kids, single mom. She had these great philosophies. One, you know, the fetus wasn't fully developed till after graduate school. She was an educator, doctor, lawyer, failure. So that was ingrained in me. And she was a third degree master of the martial arts, Black belt and Jewish guilt. All my siblings are extremely successful, especially academically. And people ask my mom all the time, how come your kids are so successful? How did Harvard, Penn, Columbia, summa cum laude. How did you do it? And she literally would say, jewish guilt. I woke them up at five in the morning, so they stayed out of trouble. They were too tired to get in trouble. And I guilted them exactly where they needed to be. For me, that Jewish guilt really resonated. And I only wanted to serve my mom. I was driven to buy my mom a house in a car. And the reason is, although I was super poor, I had such a happy life. And I watched my mom sacrifice so much. And the only time that I saw any unhappiness was when my mom would cry because we didn't have enough money. We needed food, we needed a car, broke down, we needed to go to summer camp. She was so upset. And I said, in my mind, I am going to manifest or I'm going to get a ton of money so I can buy my mom a house and a car. And that journey led me through trying to be a professional football player, to being a doctor, to being a lawyer. And when I graduated, law school was a critical decision in my life because I got two job offers. I was $100,000 in debt from law school. I had gotten a scholarship to college, and I got offered a job to be an oil and gas litigator, which I did research, by the way, and went to Tulane Law School because it was a toug maritime law school in the country, if not the world. I was going to be a rich oil and gas lawyer. I looked it up. Who pays the most? What job pays the most? And that was it. I was going to make a million no matter what. But then I also got offered a job to sell legal research on the Internet. And it was the early 90s. Nobody even knew what the Internet was. I asked my unbelievable advisor, my mom, what to do. Without blinking, she told me to be A real lawyer. She also told me that the Internet was going to be a fad and I'd be wasting my time doing anything in the Internet.

Do you ever bring that back up to her?

Yeah, of course. But I more bring it up to other people because she's just a wonderful person. She loves it. But it's a very, very, very valuable lesson. Just because somebody loves you, and my mom loves me too much. You talk to her, you'll tell she thinks way too highly of me. But just because someone loves you doesn't mean they give you good advice. And so many times I see people taking the advice, worrying about what other people think just because they care about them and love them, but yet they don't know anything about what they're talking about. And we cannot confuse the fact that people care about us with that they know anything of what they're talking of. And so I was determined to find people that sat in the position I wanted to be in. I wanted to find the experts at what I want.

Was that going for you? Was that like something that was like, how did you understand that? Because I think a lot of people don't get that. You know, they take it, what their loved ones say and then they're like, okay, well I'm gonna stop where you were, like, no, I need people around me. How did you know that?

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EarnFree it was mostly around money that I knew. My mom was horrible with money. I knew through college and law school that I could give my mom all the money in the world and she would never have any. It was innate in her being right. She was just this person that was a catalyst that had bad energy towards money. But I knew it just in my being that that's not the person I'm going to ask about money. And I ended up to be right. And you know, I literally have learned from that experience that I was right, that I continued to do that. Where I went wrong though, as we talk through My journey is I was a millionaire nine months out of law school. The company I worked for sold for Thomson Reuters Three years into my career for $3.4 billion in 1995. And it set me on a different trajectory and sent me off to the Silicon Valley where I raised millions and millions of dollars with a wireless proxy server company and then eventually landed as the CEO of the world's first smartphone, something called the PCE phone. It was Samsung's first phone manufactured smartphone. They called them convergence devices in 1999. They didn't call them smartphones. And it was the world's first Microsoft phone. It was a Windows CE phone. And so I had now surrounded myself with the biggest leaders on Sand Hill Road, the biggest of our industry, entrepreneurs like Bill Gates and Michael Dell and just extraordinary people. And I started to pick up on the attributes of the most successful people. The irony is I stopped asking for help. I allowed my own ego, my own Midas touch to get in my own way. And I surrounded myself with the wrong people and the wrong ideas. But for my wife, who saved not only my life but but just saved all my being by teaching me to look at things in a different way, to live with radical humility, to take stock in who I was, to develop values like the ones that I was raised with. And ironically I changed my. I retired in my 30s after being CEO of the PCE phone, the smartphone company. I retired with everything I ever dreamed of. By the way, I did buy my mom a house in a car. Nine months out of law school is the first thing I did. Still one of great achievements in my life. But ironically I met a guy named Lee Steinberg in my quantum shift in life, my transformational years. And while I was working as CEO, the most notable sports agency in the world, I lost everything. So I made some bad assumptions about borrowing against equity that I had and I was not paying attention and got my ego involved in a few lawsuits and. And ended up losing over $100 million portfolio at that time and still to this day is a complete miracle of my life. I don't believe in mistakes. I believe in the other M word, miracle, not mistakes. Because it was truly a miracle that I had something that could humble me and teach me to be of service and of value. And as I lost everything, I changed my ways and learned that I was going to live my life service as a capitalist, meaning I was going to make a lot of money to help a lot of people and have a lot of fun. Everything that I did now was not for Me, it was through me, for others. And I created a prayer that I would pray for at least 10 people I could help every day, that I would create more value out of everything that I did and be able still to be a capitalist and to help empower people, to empower other people to be happy. Utilizing this philosophy about money.

Did you. So while you were, you know, in the process of losing everything, what was the first moment that you were like? I'm losing everything in watching your. Because I'm sure your. Obviously, your identity gets really fixed into the income you're making, so. Been there. Not to where you were exactly. But, you know, there's that moment where it's almost like it's surreal and you know that your life will never be the same and you can't quite see the other side yet. Like, it's the crumbling.

Yeah. What happened to me is when I realized that I had made bad assumptions. So, you know, I had all these warnings. You know, my dad had warned me at 30 that he had sent me a birthday present, a jacket with no pockets, to warn me that I was just like him. It was the first present my dad had given me in 20 years after missing my birthday at 10 and telling me he didn't believe in birthdays. I was so excited to get this jacket, but it was just a lesson to hang in my closet a jacket with no pockets so I wouldn't be the richest man in the city cemetery, that I literally would remind myself every day that I'd be buried in that jacket with nothing to take with me to another warning where my best friend told me that he wasn't hanging out with me because he didn't like who I was hanging out with. And I told him, yeah, but I'm not doing what those guys are doing. And he said, you know what? You can lie to me, but don't lie to yourself. To the third lesson warning. Yeah. My wife, who I've known since the fourth grade, you know, basically telling me she wasn't happy. This is while I still had everything, and telling me that I better go take stock in who I was and what I wanted to become, but the real moment of that realization, which is a hard one to fathom as well to process, was when I actually had to file bankruptcy. Not only did I have to go tell Lee Steinberg and Warren Moon, the Hall of Fame quarterback, who were both my business partners, who had no idea, because I had to hide it from them, that I was a complete financial failure because they had promoted me as the next Jeff Morad, who was their previous partner who bought the Padres recently in that time that I was the new Jeff Morad, the Super Midas super success. I had to go tell them that I wasn't what I appeared to be, my identity of being rich and successful.

How did you tell them? What was that conversation? Because it's all about the tough conversations.

Yeah, that was easy. Wait till you hear the next conversation. But, yeah, I went in there and I figured, you know, I gotta just take accountability. And so what I did was I asked them if I could meet with them. I told them the reasons why I hadn't told them, and I could understand if they no longer wanted me to be in charge and was hoping that they could forgive me not for losing everything, but more importantly, not to have the confidence in them that they still would appreciate the value that I bring to the company and that my own ego was in my way. And I, you know, they both were just extremely humble and gracious, and they had, you know, said, this is why we did hire you, because you're the type of person that would be accountable and come in and say these types of things. So, you know, the worry was worse than the actual conversation.

I was going to say, I can't imagine the stories you told in your head before that.

Oh, God. Sleepless nights. And then worse than that was, I had to then go tell my mother, right? Doctor, lawyer, or failure, the only reason I wanted to be rich was to buy my mom a house and a car. And I had to go tell her that her golden child, her great, successful son, the one that for years she told, was lost. Because I would tell her that I knew better than she did and all the dumbass things I said to my mom. But worse than anything you could ever imagine, where it all hit home was when I realized that not only did I have to go tell my mother, but I had forgotten to take my mom's house out of my name.

Oh, God.

Therefore, I lost her house and she had to move.

Oh, my God.

Yeah.

What did she say?

Here's where my life changed is I had built this. And like you said, I wonder what that conversation looked like in your mind. My conversation looked like me telling my mom and, you know, just like Red fox falling to the ground, holding his heart. You know, I'm coming to you easy. You know, this is it. You know, I literally thought that she would break down and. And just the Jewish guilt would be never ending in a menstrual. And I told you so. And instead I told her she looked at me and without blinking, she said, honey, are you okay? Do you need any money? Like, you know, I still get choked up. I get choked up saying it because like, to me, that was the point in my life where I'm like, oh my God, I am so blessed with my family, my wife, my kids. This extraordinary unconscious competency that I have the ability to create and to make money and to help people. And I've taken it all for granted. And this was the lesson that I needed. I am going to live my life in a whole. I'm going to live it like my mom, just unconditionally love other people. Was a second grade teacher who came home with six kids and loaded us up with paper bag dinners of bologna and peanut butter and jelly and filled up Turnstiles at the 7:11 so we could eat. And I was born with a higher unconscious competency. I always could make money. You just don't make millions of dollars out of law school that fast if you don't have a gift. And I believe I can help people attain that gift and shift their energy. And I've learned to diagnose the attributes of what I have energetically and genetically to help people. But man, that to me was a catalyst that I was going to live my life with my gifts like my mom had lived it. But because I have different gifts than my mom, not only could I help empower people like my mom did with my time, but more importantly, I was going to amass great wealth and allow it to come through me to help more and more people. And one of the biggest achievements of my life, I always tell people, they'll ask me, do you think money buys happiness? Because I think money is super important. And I always tell them, money does not buy happiness, but it's necessary and it's important because it allows you to shop just like faith allows you to shop from the great power of intention in the field of intention for everything. We want money at this vibration is the currency to allow you to get what you want. But you need to shop for the right things. So at 50 years old, I built two community centers in Africa and impacted millions of people. And I shop for the right things. And I've never been happier, more profitable and purposeful and passionate in my life because I started to shop for the right things.

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So you talk about that pivot point where it's like that realization of who you want to be now, but also that you are the person who is able to make money, who can come back. You innately know that, and you know that you have these attributes. So what did you start doing at that point that you were like, I know I have these things innately? Is that something that you went to right away, or what did that look like?

Yeah. So two things that I did, right? I trusted in the process. Right. I trusted in myself. I trusted in the universe. And so what I did is, number one, I started practicing what I believe to be true, even though it was terrifying. So, for example, I got my first paycheck from Lee. And now you're talking about someone that lost everything. A ski mountain, a golf course, 33 homes. I lost everything in my home. I was now living in a rented house with rented furniture. I had no credit, right? I mean, literally, I was living paycheck to paycheck, and I got my first paycheck, and I wrote a check from my paycheck and showed my wife. And I said, I'm going to give this to our high school, where my wife and I both went to the same high school. We didn't date, by the way. She hated me anyway. I threw an egg at her when I was little, and I knew her since the fourth grade. But moreover, I wrote this check to give a scholarship through Warren Moon's scholarship fund, Crescent Moon foundation, to a kid from my high school to go to college. Because I could have never went to college without scholarship money. My siblings could have never went to College without that kind of money. And so I asked my wife, who's pregnant with our fourth child. We have three kids at the time, none of them over the age of 10. And I said, is this okay? I'm going to give this money for my first paycheck for someone else. And she looked at me and said, you finally get it. You trust. And I said, yep, I understand. I said, it's still scary, but I understand. She said, if you really trust it, go ahead and double it. And I said, no, I don't trust the universe that much. I'm not doing it. And the reason I tell the story, though, is I think it's important that people know. And people ask me all the time. I'm a hypocrite. Like, I'm in the enjoyment of the consistent every day, persistent without quit pursuit of my potential. I'm not at my potential. So every time I give to charity, every time I do something, there's a hint of fear. There's a scarce feeling that I have, like, should I do this? My girls aren't all in college. I haven't paid for the weddings and the graduate schools and the graduate, you know, the grandkids. Like, why am I giving all my money away? Well, I want people to know that the more you trust it and the more you fight the ego and the fear of loss, the more you'll have. And that it's not a trade. I don't give to get anything. I give unconditionally and trust the universe that I'm creating a void for it to fill with everything that I want by giving away what other people want, by elevating others, to elevate myself. This mechanism has been extremely powerful over the last 10 years to not only enable me to get back into a financial position that I was, but even more important, to have extreme impact and purpose into my life. Wow.

I'm like just making quote tiles in my head of everything you're saying right now. So you were talking about. I was watching an interview with you and I absolutely was feverishly taking notes because some of the things you were saying is, are just vital for every. Obviously not only person who wants to attract what they want in their life, but if they're at a point where they're leveling up. And I think we're always trying to get to the next level.

Right.

But you were talking about being a student of your calendar, and that was so huge to me because I think this is something that's overlooked. And I even, I know it, but I Still, forget about it. So can you tell me a little bit about understanding how you were talking about understanding time and understanding ego?

Yeah. So number one, time is a big detriment to everyone because they don't understand it. There's two time frames. One is man made time. It's 24 hours. It's a man made construct. And that's where I use the student of the calendar. Right. I want to be productive and accessible with my 24 hours. I want to define my time as activity. I get paid for an activity I don't get paid for. I don't believe in work, and I can prove that to anyone. I mean, I pay $2 million a year to play second base for the Padres and somebody else gets paid $2 million to do that, and he calls it work. So work is just activity you get paid for and then there's activity you don't. But by being a student of your calendar, what it does is it harnesses faith. Faith is the aggregate of what you think, say, do believe, and those unconscious competencies that I talked about earlier, that genetic ones of personality traits, characteristics, obsessions and add, as well as an unconscious competency of your energy. Well, if we aggregate that and call it faith, how do we allow our faith to go shopping? For us, it's truly a currency that buys from the field of intention, that holds everything. Well, the way that we do that is to focus on things. So what I want you to focus in on is your time, the 24 hours that you have in a day. And so what I do is I study my calendar. What am I doing to be productive and accessible? Productive is obvious. That's adding value. But accessible is accessible to others as well as being able to access what I want. And what am I doing in person, on the phone, via email and media, that's radio, print, tv, social media, whatever it is. What am I doing every day to be productive and accessible with that time, and not only with what's scheduled, but also with the white space in my calendar, the things that aren't scheduled. In fact, if you want to have an amazing advancement of exponential growth and acceleration in your life, go ahead and study sleep. That's something that everybody does unconsciously for six to 10 hours a day, and yet we don't spend. That's a majority of your day. And it's consistently the only thing that everyone does more than just breathing. I mean, besides breathing. Everybody sleeps. And yet nobody's taking advantage of the productivity and accessibility of sleep and studying it. So I tell people to Pay more attention to which harnesses the power intention of what we want by being a student of your calendar, studying it every day. If you just get in the habit by the way of studying your calendar for three minutes a day, watch and see how much more productive you are, how much more value you give, and how much more accessible you are to others. And to get what you want. It is the easiest, simplest way to do that. The other thing that creates resistance is the understanding of true ties, which is infinite. And the reason that we have problems with infinite time is that the human brain, mind, perception, cannot grasp billions and billions of years, billions and billions of lifetimes. They can't conceive it. The human mind, it doesn't understand that our lifetime is a blink. And it doesn't understand that 10 years is a blink, one year is a blink, one month is a blink, one week is a blink, one day is a blink, one hour is a blink. So what we do is we make decisions and assumptions based upon a time that truly can't be comprehended. And we make a decision and there's action and reaction in those time frames, and we start making judgments and conditions based upon the actions and reactions that are truly arbitrary and capricious. Because what I do today truly may not take place until a lifetime, two lifetimes, or a million lifetimes, who knows? But I immediately see a piece of the puzzle and thinks it has to fit in right now, when it might not fit in for 30 years, which is truly just a block. So I tell people all the time, you've got to be in control of your calendar. You got to study your calendar, be in control of time, and understand the distinction between man made construct of 24 hours as well as infinity time.

So for you, if I were to look at your calendar, do you literally plan everything?

Well, that's what's so great. That may be the best question anyone's asked us, because I love questions that illustrate the conflict that exists of how people perceive things. So I do not schedule everything. The schedule is what I'm doing in person, on the phone, email and media. But I study the white space of my calendar, meaning what can I do with that time? And it changes with determinant upon what's going on in the day. But what I'm doing is I'm projecting productivity and accessibility into the man made construct. By studying what I am doing, I'm looking at how can I be more efficient, effective and statistically successful with that time. And it's interesting because we talked earlier before the interview about my favorite topic, which is availability and unavailability, which really aligns with the student of the calendar. Let me explain why. Because the more available I am to others, the more that I can access and the more that they can access. The biggest determination in my success is that I believe that I'm more available to other people than anyone I know. And I also make other people available to me. What does that mean? Too many people deal with the aftermath of availability. So we're training our salespeople, our periodontist, our everybody about what to do when somebody is available. But in order to truly exponentially grow and accelerate your career, what if more people were available to you? You wouldn't even have to be as statistically successful. So for example, if you're someone that could close two people out of 10 on whatever it you're doing, meaning you could share a vision twice out of 10 people. Well, if you're only seeing 10 people a day, that means you're only successful twice. Now, if I learn how to make people accessible to me, available to me, and I have 100 people available to me, and even if I only can get one person out of 10 to share my vision, I am out. My output, my productivity is five times yours. Just because I have more people available to me. Me and I believe that availability is a key component, a skill that we must teach everybody. Because if you look at a really broad woo sets of things when we want to ask and attract in our life, the more things that are available to us, statistically we're going to be more successful. Even if we're not as successful at sharing a vision or aligning with what is available. It doesn't matter if more is available to us. If you're investing money And I have $20 million and I invest $2 million into 10 companies and nine fail and one's successful, but it makes $100 million, right? I'm a huge success. I've netted $80 million. But meanwhile, statistically I'm a huge failure. I've picked nine losers and I just really want people to think about, go home and say, gosh, what am I doing to make people available so that they can help me with what I want? In fact, there's two simple questions on earth to get what you want. Number one is how can I be of service? Or how can I provide value? And two, it's do you know anyone or anything that can help me? If you learn those two questions, invariably you will be the biggest success you've ever seen.

So I mean, the first one, how can I add value? I absolutely love that one and try to practice it whenever possible. But I'm definitely not doing much of. And I don't think I know a lot, which is just crazy because when you say it, it's like, of course. But at the same time, there's so many things that come up around asking that question. Number one, if we can just share with everyone, who do you start asking that to? How do we overcome the fears around asking that question? And does it just become. Does it become a muscle you build? Does it become a habit? How do we make sure that we were asking the right people?

Great. Number one, it's a habit. You need to build the muscle. And so start by just considering the numbers. I think everyone has no problem asking how I can be of service or a value. I believe that no one has that problem. The real problem exists with the ego, with the humility that it takes, the need to feel superior or inferior, separate. But what happens is if you start by just telling yourself that most people, on average, including you, you know at least 1,000 people that could help me. That's, you know at least a thousand people that either be via in person, email, social media, you have about a thousand people that you could find out whether they could help me. So every day all I did was ask one person to start at the end of the month. I would have access to about 31,000 people that I didn't have access to before. And I think about the four ways that I can ask in person on the phone via email or media. And for me, it's become a habit, and it's an extraordinary habit because I went from asking one person a day to trying to do one person on the phone, one via email, one via in person, and one via social media or other media. And now it became four a day, 112 people a month, times 1,000. There was 112,000 people minimum that were available to help me. And the funny thing that I learned was the subtleties of saying, do you know anyone that can help me with or anything that can help me? Well, by asking. That is a really soft way of asking the person who I'm talking to for help as well. Right. They could be one of those people that they know the more that you do it and the bigger the habit gets. I actually still to this day, every day go to my send box and see how many people via email that I asked, do you know anyone that can help me? Or do you know anything that can help Me, because I just want to double check is that muscle being utilized? And, you know, out of the 96 sent messages I've had in the last hour, you know, there's 22 of them that I asked. And I can only get better, and it's only helping me, and I'm making other people feel. The best thing you can do. Read Ben Franklin's autobiography. The best thing you can do is ask somebody for help, because you become an investment of theirs, and you make them feel good, purposeful, and passionate. Whenever you ask anyone for help, it's one of the kindest things that you can do is to add that type of purpose to somebody. That compliment elevates their energy and inspiration. So you're doing somebody a favor and giving them a gift by asking if they know anybody that can help you or know anything that can help you.

Oh, this is so. This is, like, so important. I run a women's event where I do an exercise where we just have to ask questions for maybe something that we need. And it's probably one of the most challenging things for a lot of the people because, you know, I'm always curious what those fears are around asking. And also they're afraid of rejection. So what do you say around that?

So, first of all, we have to take control of our fears. So, you know, one of the things that I practice is being aware of my ego. The ego is always with us. It's what deters us or creates resistance, voids, and shortages in our life. It's the need to be, like I said, inferior, superior, separate, need to be right, offended, resentful, guilty, angry, fearful. All these different needs of the ego. And what we need to do is ask ourselves and be aware of, why do I feel this way? Why won't I ask for help? And we have to realize that I need to go back to center. I have to literally train myself, convince myself, put faith in myself and the universe that I am doing and giving and being of service by asking someone for help. Because we have to learn that the ego is in our way, and we have to ask why. And when we start controlling that, once we're aware of we're in thinking with or acting in ego, we can go back to center, which is why meditation, to me is so important. Because if we know where our center is, if we know where our place of peace is, when we are off center or we're out of place, we can then, instead of accelerating through things and making it worse, we actually can take a deep breath, go back to center. And go back onto the trajectory or the pursuit of our potential in which we want so many people. The analogy I use, they get on the freeway to go five south, you know, here in California, and they end up on the 5 North, and instead of putting on the brakes and immediately turning around, they accelerate and they end up in San Francisco when they wanted to be down in San Diego.

So for somebody who has an idea or has a, you know, a small idea on their passion, or maybe a business, business that they want to start, but they are either analyzing or they're doing risk assessment, do you think that it's like, when do you tell someone just to go full throttle on that vision instead of analyzing? Is it right for me, is this really the passion? Is this the thing? Or how do you know?

Yeah. So first of all, things change. So you never know. What you need to do is start with profitability. So I'm a firm believer in that, that people love what they do, they don't do what they love. Two types of people, people who dream about doing what they love and then those who have learned to love what they do. And you need to be a person that loves what they do. In the same respect, when you're creating an idea, you have to realize there's a million great ideas out there. But in order for it to be considered a business, in order for it to be profitable, it has to make money. And so your first step that before you raise money, before you start the business is anything, is you need some sort of a perspective of how you're going to monetize your idea. Right? A business is about making money, Right. Otherwise, it's easy once you get profit, it's easy to be passionate and purposeful with profit. Right. The other side of it deters you from passion and purpose. So I always suggest people to go out and seek help, to give mentorship to pass their idea by, people who sit in the situation that they want to be in to allow them to help you create a model that at least has a perspective of profitability. Then once you have a profitability perspective, you then can start pursuing that potential and of course, getting aligned with what you need to do. Take action and prepare for adjustment. But most importantly, be a sacrifice, stay in business. Right? You need to start that business and be a sacrifice. Initially, you need to stay in business. And then as the value of what your idea and the execution of your idea is, you can go ahead and figure out whether I should raise money, work off of profits, or sacrifice more. But what most people don't understand is they think that great idea is a business. They think that it takes no sacrifice, that they can just raise. I can't tell you how many people say, can you help me raise money? And I'll say, oh, do you have a business plan? No. Do you have an executive summary? No. Do you know how you're going to make money? No. Right. But they have a great idea. There's a million great ideas. You've got to put and be more interested and create a profitability perspective so that you have a basis in order to effectuate getting aligned with your idea, taking action on your idea and preparing for adjustment while always looking at the value and knowing. The number one piece of advice about starting a business is to stay in business. So for me, even today, 11 years after starting Sportswell Marketing, my first question each day is, can I guarantee I'm going to be in business tomorrow? And I make sure I work through that every day because I know no matter what, if I'm in business, my business has an opportunity to evolve and all it takes is one touch of favor and for it to, in order for it to have exponential growth and acceleration and that, you know, the world is in my hand. When I stay in business. The only way that business dies is just like when the body dies, when the heart stops beating and it's always generated by profit.

Oh, I love that question. That's such a great question. Can I ensure that I'll be in business tomorrow? Because it just makes you immediately think, what action do I need to do right now to make sure I'm doing that?

Yeah, it's like availability, right? What action do I have to take to make sure I'm available tomorrow and others are available to me?

What is a question that you wish more people asked you?

I wish more people would ask me for. And I'll give you for my best piece of advice about what I know. And so, for example, when our economy goes down, I'm going to do whatever it takes to get in front of, of Warren Buffett and simply say, hey, Warren, I got $30 million. What should I invest in? Right? Because literally his knowledge is extraordinary. So if you're going to ask anyone, including me, it's like, what's your best piece of advice? What have you learned in this process? And what I've learned and what I like to teach people is simple kindness. Right? Be kind to your future self. Do good deeds, add value to everything and everyone you run into. And simply, if you take that perspective, everything will come to you rapidly. And accurately. It's, you know, you got to do the things when nobody's looking, but you got to trust the universe that if you are kind to your future self, every person, place and thing that you run into, you make better, you provide value to it, and you stick to simple kindness. It's amazing how your life will end up. And I promise you, if you can help other people get what they want, you'll get what you want.

So good. So I truly believe that people who are some of the most successful people are really effective at communicating or having tough conversations or having not going to bed with either resentment or something that they want to say. So what makes you. Because I can already tell you're a freaking amazing communicator. What are the keys to clear, loving, communication and having tough conversations?

So there's four things I think that help. Number one is gratitude, because gratitude gives you perspective. So to be an effective communicator, in order to do anything in life, we need to control our perspective. And so if we focus in on and put faith in what we want, one, through gratitude, right? I tell people all the time, if you want to change your life, simply say thank you before you go to bed. And when you wake up, you know it's the easiest way to change your life. I've studied physics, quantum physics, and metaphysics. Without a doubt, the easiest way to change your life is simply to say thank you every single day before you go to bed when you wake up. So if you take a gracious perspective and be thankful for everything, everyone and all the different personal relationships and instances of experience, you will be so far ahead. The second thing is forgiveness. I am amazed how much time, money, resources and relationships are ruined because we don't understand forgiveness. And the cool thing is you only have to forgive one person, that's yourself, because you can't give what you don't have. I can't tell you how many people have wasted time, resources, money and relationships not forgiving other people for the same things that we do. In fact, I used to tell people all the time the things I hated most about my father were the things I hated most about myself. Once I learned to forgive myself, it was so easy to forgive my father. But forgiveness gives you peace. And so when you have a gracious perspective and you're at peace, the third thing you want to do in communication is always be accountable. Two simple questions in my life that I ask. One, what did I do to attract this to myself? And what am I supposed to learn from it? So there's never blame shame and justification in my conversations. I'm never below the line, so I'm not creating void shortages and resistance into any of my relationships that I have. And then finally understanding inspiration. So the understanding of inspiration is what we were talking about earlier with the ego, is that you need to live, etc. You leave to leave at peace. You need to clear and clean the connection to that which inspires you. And before you can inspire other people, before you can connect to other people, you need to connect to that which inspires you. You need have a clean, strong connection to that which inspires you. So you stay in spirit. You stay inspired. You are not tired. You literally, once you inspire, can allow all that energy and inspiration to come through you for others, to benefit them. And the best way to help other people is to inspire them. But there's no way you can give what you don't have. So you need to make that connection first. So gratitude, empathy, forgiveness, accountability, and inspiration are the four things that will make any relationship, any communication, more effective.

Beautiful. So I feel like you are so, you know, you're playing at a really high level. You're, you know, you're super dialed in, but obviously you're still human. So can you speak to me a little bit about, like, distraction in comparison? Does that even plague you or what do you say? What do you say around the.

That. So all the things that plagued me before still plagued me today. It's just at a lesser percent. And so I'm on the pursuit of my potential. And it's not just distraction, it's the ego. Right. I still have a need to be right and need to be offended and need to be resentful. I need to be separate. I need to be inferior. Superior. All these different things still haunt me. It's just what percentage of the time do I allow it to distract me from my trajectory? And how quickly can I get back to the trajectory, the pursuit of my potential? What clarity, balance and focus do I have in my life to allow me to clean the connection to that which inspires me? And how aware am I of what I'm doing and how much help am I? In fact, the two words that ring true in my heart, that sit on my nightstand and in my wallet and on my screensaver, is radical humility, right? Can I have the faith to surrender? Surrender and allow things to happen. And this word, allowance confuses people. Allowance. Allowance is not passive, right? Allowance is not passive at all. I use the analogy of, hey, when I was a little kid, my mom gave Me a quarter allowance for doing a whole bunch of chores. Allowance is hard work. Allowance is an aggressive, really active behavior. It's not the law of attraction, but it institutes the law of Goya, the law of getting off your ass. Allowance to me is the ability to not only take action to what I want in the most efficient way, effective and statistically successful way, but more importantly, while I'm taking that action, to be radically humble enough to get back to center when my trajectory changes to one of ego based emotions. A waste of energy, time, resources, money and relationships. So there's a combination of really focused, disciplined behavior plus this allowance and the allowance is an aggressive behavior that is a fight between good and evil. It's a fight between peace and evil. It is a fight for me to know and forgive myself every time that I say something I wish I didn't say or acted and did something that was not in the pursuit of my potential. When I acted out of fear of loss, of guilt, of anger, of attacking thoughts which happened to me every day, I'm just getting better and better and better at a percentage where it doesn't. I'm not pouring on the gas when I'm going the wrong way. I'm trying to break as fast as I can and turn around, back to center and then I'll get started on my trajectory again.

What is lighting like? What is the most exciting thing for you right now, personally? Like, what's really lighting you up?

That's awesome. The impact side of what I do. So what's lighting me up is to live such an inspired life and to have the relative relationships with, you know, my mom, my wife, my children and to be able to not only impact those individuals, but so many more people. The advent of the ability to communicate with millions of people every single day and have it be perpetuated. I'm not personally doing it. I'm creating videos. I'm not asking for anything. I give away all my books, I pay for shipping. I don't have any advertisers or sponsors, I don't do product placement. I simply am trying to inspire people to live a productive and accessible to get what they want. And most importantly, not only to be happy, but to empower others. To empower others to be happy. And all the different platforms that I can utilize, whether it be my podcast, which is the playbook, or my TV show elevator pitch, or just my Instagram or LinkedIn or YouTube, whatever it is, the speeches that I give, I am just so blessed that I've been given a platform Exposure to empower others, to empower others to be happy. And I live by the light, meaning that I live that all it takes is one particle of light to counteract millions particles of darkness. And if I've been given a gift and an allowance to be that light, I can't think of any better life that I'd like to live with. The profit, the passion, and the purpose that I have.

I love that. That's so beautiful. You have so much energy. Do you think it comes from just waking up and reminding yourself to, you know, what real fulfillment means to you? Like, what does real fulfillment mean to you? Because I know that you have literally experienced all of it. So what is driving you? What's giving you that energy?

That's awesome. Because it's probably the most common question people ask me is, man, you're over 50 years old and you're the most inspired person. Like, the amount that you get done can do. It's extraordinary. How do you do it? How do you stay up all the time with so much energy? Well, I am connected to that which inspires me. It's not coming to me or for me. It's through me. And so I have just created the ability to figure out how to connect to that which inspires me. And right. I'm living of purpose, on purpose, and that's what inspires me. And so if anything deters or corrodes my inspiration, instead of trying to fight through it, I go back to center and get a strong connection to that which inspires me and then take action. And so it's a completely different, divergent type of attitude and perspective in life that I'm most concerned about just allowing things to come through me. And that, most importantly, is connecting to that which inspires me. I always tell people the ego is. It stands for Echo Goodness out. You want to edge goodness out. If you want the biggest corrosion of life, it's ego. That's what creates all the corroded connections. If you want to be sad, if you want to live in a faith of what you don't want, if you want to live and avoid shortages, obstacles, sickness, all the different things that you don't want in your life, go ahead and live in ego. If you want a clean connection and stay inspired and manifest not only productivity but accessibility, then clean that connection and don't allow anything to edge goodness out of your life. Connect to goodness. Connect that that which inspires you and allow yourself to inspire others with it.

So when you're talking about connecting to that which inspires you. And you're talking about not, you know, letting that connection corrode, like for people who don't have maybe the tools in place. Are there, Are there simple things that you started doing or even that you do. I would love to hear the conversation that you do now in your head to be like, okay, I'm, you know, I'm definitely in a lower vibration or I'm thinking these thoughts, or I can tell I'm in lack. Or I'm not in a good mood or whatever that is. Do you sit? Do you meditate? Do you change your. Do you go on a walk? What is that?

Yeah, so there's some simple things that I do. One, the key to awareness is when I don't feel good, I ask myself why.

Oh, easy.

Okay, so remember, we have. Have a pure litmus test of whether we're connected or not to goodness or whatever inspires you is, hey, I feel really good, but what if I don't feel good? Like, you just listed off some things earlier about I don't feel so good. Right. Well, number one, why? And I keep asking myself why until I figure out what it is and really try to get to the reasons I don't feel good, the impact it's having on my life, and the capabilities I have want or need in order to effectuate feeling good. Good. And then what I do is I go ahead and I sit down and I straighten my spine, I close my eyes and I breathe deep in through my nose as if I'm breathing from the end of the universe all the way through me. And then I breathe it back out through my mouth, manifesting or focusing on what I do want. I believe that if you put faith in what you want, you'll get it. If you put faith in what you don't want, want, you're going to get that as well. One of the purest examples of that coming from the realm of academia and almost everyone can resonate with this is if you got a big test and you put faith in what you don't want, meaning, man, I hope this question's not on the test. I hope this question is not on the test. I guarantee you what question will be on the test. And we do that all day long. We put faith into what we don't want, and then we're so surprised when we get what we don't want. Well, put faith in what you want and don't be surprised when you get exactly what you want. And we can do that through clarity, balance, and focus. We can do that through Simply straightening our spine, breathing deep in through our nose and out through our mouth. Understanding the reasons, impacts and capabilities of what we have in order to reconnect, to not allow edginess, to not allow us to edge goodness out of our life. To simply connect and clean the connection to that which inspires us. And I just hold that breathing until I feel good again. And then I put those positive mental thoughts about what I do want. And then I go ahead and reset, re acclimate, enjoying the consistent every day persistent without quit pursuit of my potential.

So is there anything, because I could talk to you all day, is there anything that we have not covered that is just on your heart that you want to leave with our listeners?

You know, I think lowering the bar, I think people make things too difficult. They create so much resistance and don't understand outcomes. And, you know, I think it's really important to understand what I'm talking about, this enjoyment of the consistent, persistent pursuit of your potential. Meaning if you lower the bar, two minutes of meditation is worth more than two hours in a week. If you do things consistently. There's 10,000 new inputs every day in your world generated by your perception. So the five senses that you have, you have cellular memory. And if you do something every day, it goes through that cellular memory from what you think, say and do into the 40,000 of the same thoughts you have every day. Those subconscious thoughts that sit and generate neural pathways in your mind that create efficiencies, effectiveness and statistical success. And if we can control our inputs to positive ones, if we control the 40,000 of the same thoughts that go through our mind all day long and all night while we sleep, we can actually effectuate our unconscious competency. What does that mean? We actually can activate DNA that we want. We can have personality traits, characteristics, obsessions and addictions that we want in order to be more productive and accessible. But also we can shift our energy, we can carry an energy that we can be one of those people that fall into a gutter and end up smelling like roses. We can be one of those people that nobody knows why those touches of favor keep coming our way. Why no matter what we do, we end up attracting exactly what we want. The right people, the right ideas, the amount of money. I truly believe you could take all the money in the world, drop it into the desert. It would go and redistribute itself to the exact same people. Because of what I'm talking about, controlling the conscious inputs, the 10,000 new data inputs a day, the 40,000 subconscious thoughts are exactly there every day and the unconscious competencies that we have. And if you do that, you will be kind to your future self and you will be able not only to ask for help, but to do good deeds for others.

I'm so grateful for you today. And this is. I always say my podcast is like, you know, not only do I get to share and have awesome conversations, but it's like, it's like therapy. So I'm so grateful. And I know that, you know, if I'm feeling this amazing, I know everyone else has benefited so huge from this conversation. And thank you for taking the time and being available to me and being able to really share your wisdom with everyone because I have so many beautiful notes and takeaways. And I'm just grateful for how you show up in the world.

Well, vice versa. And I appreciate the opportunity to share my ideas. And if there's anything I can do to be of service, please, anyone, reach out to me at David Meltzer. Google David Meltzer. I'm here to help and to be of service. If I can't help you, I'll find somebody that can. So thank you so much.

Oh, thank you. And I know that you shared some of where we can find you, but is there anything. I know that you have amazing books. You have an incredible podcast.

Yeah, we have the playbooks. My podcast, Check it out. Tuesday, Thursdays and Saturdays. Elevator pitch is launching Wednesday, the 29th of May, season four. It's been extended out for five seasons. And you can Google me or go to Avid. Meltzer, David Meltzer on YouTube. David Meltzer on LinkedIn. Find me, ask me for help. I am here to be of service and be productive as well. So thank you.

Thank you. And you guys, if you love this episode as much as I did, make sure you share it with your friends. Share on Insta Stories. You can tag us and we'll respond back to you. And until next time, earn your happy. Bye, everyone. Thank you guys so much for spending this time with me on the earn your happy podcast. I am so, so glad that you stopped by. If you could take one second to share this episode with someone you think would love it, that would be absolutely amazing and we would be forever grateful. Also, please leave us a review. If you feel so moved by going to itunes and leaving us an honest thought, an honest comment, tell us what you think, tell us what you want to hear more of. It would really help us out on our journey to helping thousands and thousands of people. Until then, don't forget to earn your happy thanks again, guys. Bye.

Bye.