Blaze Your Own Trail - Episode 8: Success, Failure & 3 Pivots With David Meltzer

Episode Date: February 14, 2020

In this episode we talk about:  David's early success  Bouncing back from losing it all  3 Pivots  His mission to be of service to others  Connect with David here:  Website: www.dmeltzer.com  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidmeltzer/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/davidmeltzer11/ Twitter: @davidmeltzer  LInkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/davidmeltzer2/  Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCflt1OopRWIApMOjVgZyJ6Q Installing strategic sales systems & processes will stop the constant revenue rollercoaster you might be facing which is attainable through our 6 Week Blazing Business Revenue Coaching ProgramBook a discovery call with Jordan now to learn more! Are you an entrepreneur?Join my FREE Group Coaching Community where we have live calls, Q&A and more! Our Trailblazer Ecosystem also enables you to network with other entrepreneurs and creator hub eliminates multiple subscriptions and logins creating a one stop shop to take action!Use code: FOUNDING100 for 12 months access FREE and Founding pricing for life! (While Supplies Last)Join now! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode with David Meltzer, he talks about his journey, where he started, three pivotal moments in his life, and his current mission of wanting to really be of service to others. So I hope you really enjoy it, and we will chat after the episode. Hey, everybody, and welcome to the Blaze Your Own Trail podcast. This is your host, Jordan Mendoza. And I've got a very special guest today. His name is David Meltzer. he is the CEO of sports one marketing and i will let him dive in and just tell us a little bit more

about himself thanks so much george well you know just my journey as far as blazing your own trail hasn't always been that way you know i was someone that grew up trying to do one thing which was to help my my mom who's a single mom buy a house in a car you know which drove me to be rich And there was no trail that I wanted to blaze other than the fact that I was so blessed to have such an extraordinary family, even though we were broke, that I felt if I could just make my mom's life better, easier, that that's truly the mission that I had for a long time. And I went through a journey of figuring out how I could do that. You know, first was being a professional football player, spent most of my time focused in on being a great athlete, my quantum genetics, my DNA. gave me some great disadvantages when it comes to being a professional athlete. But I ended up getting a scholarship to college.

And in my first game in college is when I realized that maybe I better switched my focus to what my mom had suggested, which was doctor, lawyer, or failure. And so as I laid on my back, my first college football game, after being run over by Christian Akoye, a guy they named the Nigerian Nightmare, who ended up playing for the Chiefs, as I laid there thinking, doctor, lawyer, failure, I quickly realized that I should be a doctor like my oldest brother, and that would afford me enough money to buy my mom a house in a car. But unfortunately, being 18 years old and very ignorant, I wasn't more interested than interesting, as my brother

told me. And so I quickly realized that being an empathetic person, someone who feels everything, the hospital is not a great place for me. I never realized that being a sports doctor require me to be in a hospital. So I moved to being a lawyer. Now, that's the first place that I started to blaze my own trail because I was one of the few young people that reverse engineered why I went to law school. A lot of people go to law school because they don't know what else to do. A lot of people go because they want to be public defenders or district attorneys or corporate, you know, IP lawyers. I went to law school to be rich. So I reverse engineered the law school I went to by who gets paid the most money out of law school,

and I found that it was oil and gas litigators. So I went to Tulane Law School in New Orleans, the top maritime law school in the country, the one who hires the most oil and gas litigators. And that's how I ended up there. Ironically, when I graduated, I had two job offers, one to be an oil and gas litigator.

The other was to be a salesperson, to sell legal research online. In the early, early 90s, the internet. was not really the internet. It was dot edu almost. And so I asked my mom, talking about blazing your own trail,

and this is a great, great lesson in my life, was my mom told me emphatically that I should be a real lawyer, that the internet was a fad, and that it would be way too risky to be a salesperson, and that I needed to take the bar, take the oil and gas job,

and that would provide me the opportunity to take care of her. That's where I started blazing my own trail. That's when I learned that I can't vote for what everybody else wanted for me. No matter how much somebody loves you, it doesn't mean they give you good advice. And so much of our time in life, we try to blaze our own trail by pleasing other people. We try to blaze our own trail by voting what other people want for us. And we end up not only getting what they want for us, but we also resent them.

The interesting thing that happens when you vote for what other people want for you is you're voting for what already. So you're not going to ever blaze your own trail because if somebody's already thought of it for you They're not blazing your trail, right? They're talking about something that already exists They're usually looking for your security your safety your well-being and is not one in blazing a trail Very very very rarely have never does somebody have an idea for you to blaze your own trail very rare and that's just a common occurrence and a common mistake that people make so I decided to sell legal research online. Nine months out of law school, I was a millionaire.

I bought my mama house in the car, and I started to blaze my own trail. Started to brand myself as an internet guru. He sold West Publishing as I was a young executive there for $3.4 billion in 1995. That's when that was a lot of money in 1995. And I went up to the Silicon Valley to assist in raising $169 million in the middleware space in the wireless proxy service space and then ended up. really blazing my own trail in my early 30s as CEO of the PCE phone, the world's first convergence device, the world's first smartphone. It was the world's first Windows CE device that

did last. But I was blazing my own trail, which one of the after effects of blazing your own trail is sometimes you're just too early. And I was too early, put it this way, had a telephone that people told me it was too big, too expensive, and it was before his time. It wasn't too big or too expensive. Today those phones exist and they make billions of dollars and so we were on to something with the smartphone. We were just early in 1999 in the networks and the billing couldn't handle us. From there, continue to take hold of my own life professionally. One thing also to note is that I blazed my own trail professionally ever since law school. right very few people had the courage to you know not utilize their law degree being $100,000 in debt to go sell something on the internet very few people had the courage to go up into the Silicon Valley in 99 and raise that kind of money very few people had the courage to run a smartphone company you know that early but personally I was still a pleaser I wasn't blazing my own trail personally I was a follower I was always surrounded myself with people that were yes people

that made me feel good, that may not be aligned with my values. And I always had a kind of dichotomy in my life. That it did blaze my own trail personally, but professionally, I was a maverick, a success, et cetera. When I lost my job at PCFone, the company outgrew me, and I went and became the CEO of the most notable sports agency called Lee Steinberg Sports and Entertainment. That's where the shift in the paradigm occurred.

I started through different influences, my dad, my best friend, my mom, and my wife, realized that I may be blazing my own trail personally, I mean professionally, but personally, I was a disaster. And so I had to shift the paradigm of my life. As I was CEO of Lee Steinberg, as Lee was shifting the paradigm of his life personally, we both, through a process of lessons, learned some great things. And now not only professionally, you know, I rolled on. off a great company with Warren Moon, which I co-founded Sports One Marketing,

and now I'm CEO of my own brand, David Meltzer, enterprises in which, you know, I utilize my TV shows, my movies, my podcast, the sports agency side, everything that I do to empower others, to empower others to be happy, a greater mission using all of those different content that I put up on Instagram and LinkedIn and, you know, world's greatest motivators and beyond the same. secret and all the great things, think and grow rates legacy that I get to do, the books that I write and the stages I speak on and the executive coaching I do is all to empower others. And I truly believe that I'm blazing a trail not only professionally now, but personally,

one with a greater, bigger mission than just making a lot of money. I blaze a trail to make a lot of money so I can help a lot of people and, of course, have a lot of fun. That's awesome. And if we just stopped this interview there, that was a ton of value, right? You've gone really through a lot, right? You had all this success, and that success just kept moving. And I love the fact of what you said that you realized you had that self-awareness to understand

that you were doing great on the professional end, but in your personal life, you weren't. And so tell me a little bit about that. What was it? Was there like a pivotal moment with maybe your wife or with your father or with somebody close to you that was like, David, you know, like, what's happening here? Yeah, so three things in my life were those three pivots I call them and two were very close to one another. One happened when I was 30 years old. My dad, who I hadn't talked to wasn't very close to it. Because he was my hero, he left when I was five as my hero. By 10, he had forgotten my birthday and

broke my heart because he lied to me and said he didn't believe in birthdays. And that's when I realized my dad was a liar, a cheater, manipulator, an overseller, and a back-end seller. By 30, though, my dad, one of the pivotal moments to, you know, either seeds are planted or seeds are watered, right? And one of the goals of my life is to plant seeds for trees that I'll never sit under. And I think my dad had great wisdom in that as well. And he was planting a seed. He was either planting a seed or watering a seed for a tree that he would never sit under, but he sent me a jacket for my 30th birthday that had no pockets. And at that time, I wasn't ready to receive it.

I wasn't ready to receive the message. He had told me that he gave me this jacket, not for forgiveness, but to remind me that I was just like him. At 30 years old, I wasn't ready for that. I was a multimillionaire. I was arrogant. I was living in the ego-based consciousness. And I told my dad straight out, I'm nothing like you.

You're a liar, a cheater, a manipulator, a back-end seller, an overseller. an overseller, I'm nothing like you. I'm a man of integrity. I've made everything myself, no help to you. You've left me to do these things, and I appreciate the lessons I've learned from the difficulties that you've caused me, but I'm nothing like you.

And he said, this jacket, I've torn out the pockets, you hang in in the closet every day. I want you to look at it. Remind yourself that you're just like me. I don't want you to be the richest man in the cemetery. You're going to be buried in that jacket to remind you you can't take anything with you

when you leave. That's pivot number one. Two was my best friend who actually asked my wife in the sixth grade camp to go steady with me. And she said, no, tell him to ask me himself. And so I threw an egg at her and rocks at her and told her her friends were better looking than her. And I don't know why she, and then my late 20s married me. And she's the biggest blessing of my entire life, an extraordinary person. You'll find out by the third pivot saved my life.

But my friend, he wasn't hanging out with me anymore. my best friend since the fourth grade. Someone I had grown up with and I asked him, you were playing golf. I said, why don't you hang out with me anymore? I'm living an extraordinary life. You can go all over the world with me. We can play golf all the time. I own a golf course, man. Why don't you hang out with? And he straight out just said, I don't like who you hang out with. And I said, well, I'm not doing what those guys are doing. Right? There's that personal, you know, I may be blazing trails professionally, but personally, I'm like, I'm not doing what they're doing. He said, dude, you can lie to me, but stop lying.

to yourself. You're going down the wrong path and I don't want to see it. I don't want to be with it. And I went home crying that night because I knew it was true. Two weeks later, I was running Lee Steinberg. I went up to the Grammy Awards with Little John, the rapper, and was intoxicated, probably high when I got home at 5.30 in the morning after lying to my wife that I had a business meeting and she was waiting for me. And I remember distinctly opening the door and her looking at being disgust and say, you're, you are not a rock star. I looked at her, intoxicated, and said, I may not be, but I sure feel like one. And then she told me, she wasn't happy that I better learn to take stock in who I was

and what I wanted to become or she was going to leave me. I got extremely mad, told her to F off, told her she was inappreciative, and how could dare would she say that to me? After all I provided for her and the kids, she's never worked, look around you, Porsche, Ferrari, huge home, and live in Nair. I woke up in the morning and I wish I could have told you that I woke up at peace and forgiving and understanding, but I wasn't. I was more upset, more egotistical and driven by a need to be resentful. And I was thinking about who I should call to get a divorce, what lawyer I could, you know, squeeze everything out of this life that I had built.

And then I looked over in the closet and I saw that jacket. And I realized, man, just like my dad. I was a liar, cheater, manipulator, back end seller, overseller. And that's where it hit me. And I just got to take stock in who I was. And so that to me was the greatest pivot and the greatest gift that my father had ever given to me. Because it changed my life. It still sits in my closet.

Every time I think I'm better than I am, I'm not grateful. I look at the jacket. I'm just like, man, I got a lot more to do. I still get in my own way and I look at that jacket because I don't want to be buried with anything. I want it all. I tell my kids all time, man, if I die and there's anything left, I've made a math mistake. You know, that's where I'm living. So ironically, two years after I went through this paradigm shift of my life, I lost everything. All the causes and effects, the lessons to learn, the pain, emotional, physical, and spiritual pain that I had to

presented in my life in order to learn the lessons that I needed to learn had come to a culmination. I lost over $100 million. I had to not only tell Lee and Warren that I lost all that money, but I had to tell my mom that I lost her house because I forgot to put that out of the only reason I wanted to be rich was by a mom's house and I lost it. The radical humility that came over me 13 years ago was incredible. And I have lived my life by making room for others, of making room for what I want so I could give it to others. I live in a paradigm of asking a series of questions to see how I can be of service and value to others,

as well as asking a series of questions of who and how people can help me. And I am on a mission. I have gained so much in my life. I have everything I ever dreamed of. I am able to create more abundance of my life than ever, not by making it happen, but by allowing it happen, by being kind to my future self and always doing good deeds it being productive of value, accessible to others,

and accessing what I want, and most importantly, being grateful, living with gratitude, which gives me an extraordinary perspective of the past, present and future, forgiveness, which gives me peace, accountability, for everything that I attracted to my life, and I'm supposed to learn from it, gives me control of my life, and especially inspiration.

I live with a different paradigm that I'm always connected to the most empowering and inspiring source of energy life and lessons of love that exist, I'm the one that's creating the interference and the corrosion to allow all that inspiration and power to come through me for others. And those were the pivots and the lessons that I've learned. And hopefully by sharing those with other people on your show, they can blaze trails not only professionally by making a lot of money, but personally by helping a lot of people and being happy.

Wow, that's super, super powerful. and those three pivots, you know, for those that are listening, those are not three easy pivots to swallow, right? I mean, this is real life. And these are things that I can tell have really given you a lot of strength. And I'm sure you and your wife's relationship has probably grown exponentially because of it. And I'm sure she, it wasn't easy, right? As men, I mean, a lot of us, our egos can get the best.

best of us sometimes and you know i really really appreciate you sharing that because that that's a powerful story for anyone to hear um and the fact that you lost everything and then you had the wherewithal to not give up right to actually persevere and to keep on going and to now like the mission that you're living is in my opinion way more impactful than it was prior so kudos to you for that Thank you. And thank you for a platform. I'm looking for a thousand people to impact a thousand people to impact a thousand people to be happy. A thousand times of thousands of million, a million times a thousands of billion. So anyone out there, go ahead. You can text me at nine for nine, two nine eight, two nine oh five. If you want to join me in my mission, nine for nine to nine eight two nine oh five or just find me at David Meltzer, anywhere, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc. Our website is demelzer.com. So thank you for the platform to allow me to share. I'm more than happy to help everyone at live of service and have anyone that wants to impact others and blaze their own trail to vote for what they want in their life. And if you vote for what you want in your life, it will be elected.

So thank you so much, George. Hey, I really appreciate it, buddy. And I'll make sure everything is down in the show notes. And so everyone, make sure you connect with David Meltzer. David, thank you so much for coming on. You got it, my friend. Talk to you soon. Take care.

Wow, what an amazing journey that David. it had, going through the trials and the tribulations, you know, after success, losing it all, and then starting back over again. So I hope that was impactful for you. If it was, make sure to subscribe. Make sure to tell your friends about it. Share the podcast. I would really, really appreciate that. And I can't wait to share the next episode with you here soon.